Jedi Recovery
by Onimiman
Summary: The Jedi Order's battle against Darth Plagueis has cost them greatly. It is now up to Jaden Korr to travel the galaxy looking for former Jedi apprentices to help restore the Order. Meanwhile, because of the confrontation against Plagueis, the Galactic Alliance and the Hapes Consortium are now at war; one that threatens to destroy the Alliance.
1. Chapter 1

A fleet of Galactic Alliance Star Destroyers dropped out of hyperspace light-years from the capital of the Hapes Consortium. Immediately, the flagship of the fleet, the _Admiral Ackbar_, received a hailing from the other end.

"Put it on," Admiral Nek Bwua'tu ordered.

A holographic projection of Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo appeared before the seated Bothan. "Admiral Bwua'tu," she said, "may I speak to Chief of State A'Kla?"

Bwua'tu nodded. "You may, Your Highness." He looked off to the side and waved in a figure unseen from the other end of the projection.

Soon, the thin Caamasi frame of Galactic Alliance Chief of State Releqy A'Kla stepped before Bwua'tu, prompting Tenel Ka to smile at her diplomatically.

"Chief A'Kla," Her Majesty said, "you are just in time for the negotiations to start. I allow you to take a shuttle down so that you may land on top of the Royal Palace."

"Thank you, Your Majesty," A'Kla said before the holoprojector signal was cut off from the other end. The Chief of State then turned away and left the bridge of the _Ackbar_ to head for its hangar bay, two light-skinned, human male bodyguards escorting her along the way.

Minutes later, the shuttle carrying the Chief left the _Ackbar_'s hangar bay and headed down for Hapes. Not much longer, it parked on top of the recently-rebuilt Royal Palace before cycling its engines off.

The landing ramp opened up, allowing A'Kla and her guards to disembark from the shuttle to be met by Tenel Ka and her own entourage of guards personally.

"Your Majesty," A'Kla nodded respectfully.

"Chief of State," Tenel Ka returned with equal respect. "Shall we head down to the throne room to begin this discussion?"

Before A'Kla could return the formality to answer with a definite "yes," she suddenly looked off to the side with grave concern. Barely a second later, one of the Queen Mother's guards fired her blaster straight into the Caamasi's chest.

Just as A'Kla collapsed back to the ground, Tenel Ka had already unhooked, activated, and chopped off the arm of the treacherous guard in one swift second before the Alliance guards could even react to what was going on.

A'Kla's murderer stumbled back in pain from the burning dismemberment and tripped over the ledge of the roof behind her. She screamed as she fell to her death below.

A'Kla's guards knelt near the body of their leader and looked back up with justified shock and betrayal in their eyes. "You did this!" one of them accused, pointing directly at Tenel Ka, who still had her activated lightsaber in hand.

As one, both Alliance guards brandished their lightsabers and attempted to fire. But they were instantly gunned down by in a split second by Tenel Ka's remaining guard.

"Why did you not set your blaster to stun?" Tenel Ka asked.

"There was no time, My Queen," the guard responded. "I apologize."

"You will be reprimanded later," Tenel Ka stated. "For now, the Alliance must be informed of the assassination and the circumstances behind it. War must be averted between our governments."

Before the guard could acknowledge the Queen Mother's words, they instantly looked up to the sky in response to the flash of orange-yellow light encompassing them. There, they saw Battle Dragons firing and destroying the Alliance Star Destroyers there.

"I did not order that!" Tenel Ka exclaimed to the guard. Hurriedly deactivating and hooking her lightsaber back to her belt, she took out and activated her commlink. "Captain Hegran, what do you think you are doing?!"

"The Galactic Alliance must die, Your Majesty!" Hegran exclaimed from the other end. "We can crush them and take all of their territory! We can rule this galaxy, as Hapes has always had the right to do!"

"You are disobeying my authority, Captain!" Tenel Ka nearly shouted. "Stand down, and I promise that you will not be executed for this war crime!"

"You think this is a war crime now, Your Majesty!" Hegran proclaimed. "But when all the war vessels of the Galactic Alliance hang burning over Coruscant, ripe for Hapes to claim, you will see that your rule will be greater over the rest of the galaxy, beyond the Transitory Mists!" The sound of a blaster then went off.

"Captain?" Tenel Ka asked. "Hegran?"

"This is Commander Gebbam, Your Highness," another feminine voice responded over the comm. "Captain Hegran has just committed suicide. I am taking formal control of the fleet right now."

"Very well," Tenel Ka replied. "Call off the attack against the Alliance fleet right now, Commander. War cannot be furthered between our governments."

"It is too late, Your Majesty," Gebbam stated. "The entire Alliance fleet in the system has already been destroyed."

Tenel Ka ground her teeth before staring hopelessly off into space. "Then war cannot be stopped."

.

In the middle of an empty system, Grand Master Jaden Korr, the last of Luke Skywalker's Jedi Order, sighed as he read the news on his datapad in the cockpit of the Hapan shuttle he named _Recovery_. The death of Galactic Alliance Chief of State Releqy A'Kla and the defeat of the Alliance fleet in the Hapes system had been reported by a message sent out by a crew member aboard one of the fleet's vessels prior to their destruction. So, for the third time since Wynn Dorvan had been voted out of office, another election was being held for the position of Chief of State.

The top contenders to be nominated this time were Senator Luet Wuul of Sullust, Senator Triebakk of Kashyyyk, and Senator Fyor Rodan of Commenor, who came out of retirement since Gerila Shesh was voted out. And with the Alliance public crying out for war against the Consortium, it seemed that the vote of no confidence against Shesh was all for naught, as Rodan may very well replace A'Kla considering that he was the most militaristic between himself, Wuul, and Triebakk.

Turning his datapad off and hooking it back to his belt, Jaden began programming the coordinates for his next jump into hyperspace. Before he could do so, however, the familiar red-painted form of the Star Destroyer _Errant Venture_ appeared before him, dropping out of where he was just about to head through.

Immediately, the _Recovery_ lurched, and then began heading toward the _Venture_ of its own volition.

_Tractor beam_, Jaden thought ruefully. He then began setting up a transmission to speak to the _Venture_. Once he heard an activation beep, he asked, "Am I speaking to Captain Terrik?"

"This is Captain Horn," the voice of Mirax Terrik Horn came back. Jaden noted that she sounded like she was on the verge of shouting at him. "You have my complete attention, Grand Master Korr." From the way she said "Grand Master," it was almost as if it were a curse.

Jaden raised a brow. "What happened to your father, Captain?"

"He died of a heart attack after hearing that his grandchildren died, Korr," Mirax replied, her tone rising in hostility. "Which is why I'm reeling you in, just so you know."

_Oh, I can see where this is going_, Jaden thought. He could easily take an escape pod to make a run from the _Recovery_, but that wouldn't do; the _Venture_ would just capture that, too, and in the middle of an empty system, there was nowhere that a hyperdrive-less escape pod could take him anywhere anyway. "If you want to kill me for what happened to your children and your father, Captain-"

"Oh, I have no intention of killing you, Korr," Mirax interrupted, allowing the scorn to come through this time. "I reserve that fate to the bastard who actually murdered my children. You, I'll just torture for leading Valin and Jysella to their deaths."

"You're not the only to have lost loved ones against Darth Plagueis, Horn," Jaden argued. "And torturing me won't bring your children back."

"No, but it'll certainly make me feel better," Mirax replied just as the _Recovery_ was forcefully docked and parked in the _Venture_'s hangar bay. She then cut off the line.

And by then, Jaden lost his connection to the Force.

_Ysalamari, no doubt_, Jaden figured. _At least Horn knows who she's dealing with_.


	2. Chapter 2

Jaden offered no resistance when the _Recovery_ was boarded by five of Mirax's crew members and they took him by blasterpoint down to the _Venture_'s hangar bay. From there, he was led out of the hangar into a corridor toward a turbolift that rocketed him and the crew members to the top of the Star Destroyer. Along the way, he noticed several caged ysalamari, both within the hangar and out in the corridor.

Not much longer, Jaden was tied by a titanium cable to an old-fashioned wooden chair in Mirax's office, another caged ysalamari nearby, and the daughter of the _Venture_'s former captain leered over him in anger. Without any words exchanged between them in person, she punched him across the face, sending two bits of teeth and some blood spewing out of his mouth.

"That was for Valin," Mirax said before punching him across the other side of the face. "That was for Jysella." Then a direct punch to his nose, which then bled from both nostrils, was followed up with, "And that was for my father."

Jaden spat some blood on the floor before looking back up at Mirax. "Is that all you're going to do to torture me?"

"Yes," Mirax stated.

"So can you untie me now?" Jaden asked neutrally.

"Oh, you think I'm the only one on this ship who has a beef with you for the ones I lost because of you, Korr?" Mirax retorted. "Oh, no. You were right, though, when you said I wasn't the only one who lost loved ones to that Darth Plagueis character." She then reached her belt and took out her commlink to activate it. "Come on over, Taryn."

A minute later, the door opened again, and Taryn Zel, the widow of Jedi Master Zekk, stepped inside, and before the door even closed behind her, she was already approaching Jaden. By the time the door did close, she kicked him straight and hard in the chest, sending him collapsing back to the floor, still in the chair. While the Grand Master gasped for breath, Taryn grabbed him by the hair and hauled him back up so that he sat upright in the chair again.

"Kell, Tyria, Jesmin, you're all up," Mirax said in her commlink.

With that, Taryn turned and headed to leave the captain's cabin.

"Do Tenel Ka or your sister know that you're here, having done what you just did, Taryn?" Jaden asked.

"I don't care if they do," Taryn said without turning around, stopping, or even slowing for the door.

A little after Taryn left, Kell, Tyria Sarkin, and Jesmin Tainer stepped into the room.

"Doran wouldn't appreciate what you're going to do in his name, Tyria," Jaden said.

"Don't you dare spout that crap that got my baby killed under your Order, you son of a bitch," Tyria said just as she unhooked and activated her lightsaber. She then walked over and stabbed him in the right leg, eliciting a painful scream from the Grand Master.

After she took the blade out, Kell took out his blaster, set it to lethal, and shot Jaden in his right leg, only excruciating his pain.

Jesmin finished it off by reaching out through the Force and sending the chair to the ceiling of the room, hitting Jaden's head against him. The Grand Master received double vision as a result.

"Aryn, will you do us the honors of finishing this all off?" Mirax asked in her comm.

The Tainers took that as their cue to leave the cabin.

When Jaden managed to recover singular vision through the Force, he saw Aryn Dro Thul, Raynar Thul's mother, step into the room with a deathstick lighter.

"I know that you didn't lead my son to death, Korr," Aryn stated as she approached him, "but I suppose you'll still understand when I do this to you."

Aryn activated the lighter and then Jaden's flesh on his face seared, his shriek of pain maximized now, as it was being burned.

Half a minute later, Aryn shut off the lighter, leaving Jaden's face a burned wreck, his screams of agony still prevalent.

Mirax then walked around the chair, pressed a button that opened up the titanium cable around Jaden, then she shoved him by the back of his head to the floor. When he hit the floor face-first, his screams became grating to the ear.

A minute after Aryn left, Jaden's screams finally died down, and he looked up to the blank-faced Mirax.

"I'll give you twelve hours to get off my cruise liner, Korr," Mirax intoned. "If you're not off by then, I will kill you. Is that clear?"

Jaden nodded wordlessly.

"There's the door," she waved.

With both his legs having sustained grievous injuries, Jaden had no choice but to crawl over with his arms alone. Mirax merely watched him with that blank expression that lacked even an iota of sympathy for his plight.

.

Neither the citizens of the Galactic Alliance nor its Senate bothered to wait a whole month before launching another election for the Chief of State. The entire process took only a mere three days, and by the end of that extremely short period of time for such an election, Commenorian Fyor Rodan was chosen as the next Alliance leader.

And with that, Rodan carried himself with an air of confidence and righteousness toward the podium positioned before the Imperial Palace to make his inaugural speech to the hundreds of media representatives who attended. They all quieted down once he cleared his throat.

"My fellow Alliance members," Rodan began, "as many of you may have already known, the Hapes Consortium had declared war on this august body when they attacked Coruscant two months ago. Admittedly, the attack had been provoked due to the incompetent actions of Chief of State Shesh. But the fact remains that my late predecessor Releqy A'Kla's efforts to cease war between our nations failed with her death and the deaths of every Alliance soldier who accompanied her to Hapes, including the likes of the esteemed Admiral Nek Bwua'tu.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is clear that the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances and the Hapes Consortium cannot come to a compromise given all that has occurred between us. Therefore, in six months' time, when we have restored our military to fighting shape, we will attack Hapes. And I promise you all, we will not lose under my administration. Thank you."

Then the questions from the media crowd began.


	3. Chapter 3

"Your Majesty, I don't understand why you won't allow the Consortium to launch a full-scale attack on the Galactic Alliance!" Ducha Regh of Terephon exclaimed at Tenel Ka in the latest Hapan Council meeting.

The Duchas from the other sixty-one worlds, excluding Hapes, of course, in the assembly before Tenel Ka murmured agreement with Regh's statement among themselves.

"The Alliance is at their weakest right now, weaker than they've been even since the end of the Second Galactic Civil War!" Regh continued. "We can easily stomp them beneath our heel and inherit all their space!"

"You sound like Captain Hegran, Ducha Regh," Tenel Ka stated. "Why am I not to think that you somehow convinced her that galactic domination would be in the Consortium's best interests?" Her tone was completely reserved, as if she wasn't accusing the Ducha of Terephon of treachery typical of Hapan politics - and from a world known to have been involved in a failed coup during the Second Civil War under its previous Ducha Galney.

Regh glared at the Queen Mother in disbelief, which could have easily been feigned. But then her expression resumed its determination. "Pardon me, My Queen Mother, but regardless of whatever agenda Captain Hegran was pursuing, whether it'd be for herself or another, the fact of the matter remains that we are now officially at war with the Galactic Alliance! At the very least, we must strike first!"

"And then take over whatever remains," Tenel Ka concluded with a somber tone.

"You make it sound as if this were a negative goal for this great Consortium to pursue, Your Majesty!" Regh argued. "Why limit ourselves to the Transitory Mists?"

"Simply because we do not have the resources to take over the rest of the galaxy, Ducha," Tenel Ka replied patiently.

"But we've already recuperated the losses we took at Coruscant!" Regh pointed out. "It's not like we are too limited to keep control of all sixty-three worlds!"

"Fact. But again, we are too limited to keep a hold of the Mists and the Alliance's territory, should we pursue this war," Tenel Ka calmly stated, gradually losing her patience. "And let us not forget about the Imperial Remnant. Even if they are not as powerful as the Consortium, they are still a force to be reckoned with. Imagine what the likes of Moffs Daala and Lecersen would do against our forces, which, by then, would have accumulated countless losses against the Alliance, regardless of whether or not we win or lose. They would be repeating the very actions you suggest we take, Ducha Regh."

Regh's nostrils flared before she calmed herself. "So what would you have us do? Wait for the Alliance to recuperate their own forces and wait for them to bring this war against us, here, in our own territory? Surely, we'd suffer even more losses, regardless of whether or not we win or lose. And I would think Head of State Reige would have better control over his Moffs before he let any of them take a fleet against us."

"And what makes you think Reige wouldn't be tempted to strike at a weakened Consortium, assuming we win the war?" Tenel Ka asked. "Or whether or not he can't be convinced by the Moffs to attack us?"

"And that's what I'm trying to get at, Your Highness!" Regh exclaimed. "Even if we allow the Galactic Alliance to recuperate their numbers to attack us here, and they lose, the war will still be too destructive not to leave a considerable impact upon the Consortium. Do you honestly think the Imperial Remnant won't try something then, even if Reige wouldn't allow for it? The Moffs are a treacherous bunch."

"That sounds familiar," Tenel Ka replied snidely.

Ducha Yege of Kavan then spoke up. "Your Majesty, if I may." At Tenel Ka's nod, Yege continued. "In either case, we are at war with the Galactic Alliance, and you know as well as anybody that in such a war, if the other side does not cede, then you strike them at their weakest, and/or when they least expect it. I understand that you do not wish to incur further violence upon this Consortium, but in the end, you know that you have no choice. Ducha Regh is right, you must allow the fleet to strike the Galactic Alliance as soon as possible."

Tenel Ka allowed a sigh of frustration to escape. "If we are to pursue this war, and to cover as much territory as we can in as little time as possible, we should, at the very least, proceed with more tact than not."

"What do you mean by that, Your Highness?" Yege asked.

"I agree with the idea of striking your enemies at their weakest, Ducha Yege," Tenel Ka said. "But it is about how we strike that concerns me. We can strike not through external methods, but through internal methods."

"Espionage and sabotage," Regh concluded. "Cripple the governments from the inside."

Tenel Ka nodded. "And we would be saving so many of our own soldiers' lives, in the process."

"We would still have to pursue war with the Alliance, and no doubt the Empire, Your Majesty," Yege pointed out. "Even without their political leadership, their armies will still be formidable in their own right, and they will fight for themselves. The New Republic certainly did so after the Yuuzhan Vong took Coruscant and Chief of State Borsk Fey'lya died in the invasion."

"Fact," Tenel Ka agreed. "Which is what makes it obvious that crippling the political leaderships of both the Alliance and the Remnant from the inside will not be enough. We will need all of the higher-ranking military personnel murdered, as well. Then, when we are through with them, there will not be any military leader capable of taking on the Hapes Consortium, whether they come from Coruscant or Bastion."

When Tenel Ka was done, all of the Duchas in assembly were in agreement with her.

But inwardly, Tenel Ka was ranting at herself.

_How could you do this to the Galactic Alliance? How could you plan the destruction of everything that Jacen and his friends and family once stood for?_

_Because I am Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium. It is my duty._


	4. Chapter 4

"I want to make this absolutely clear to all of you," Imperial Head of State Vitor Reige said to the Moff Council as they were all seated around their meeting table. "We will not take advantage of this situation at all."

"Are you going to complain about limited fleet resources again, Head of State?" Moff Porrak Vansyn asked derisively. Apparently, he was still bitter about Reige shooting down his and Calron the Younger's bid to leave the galaxy when the Killik nest of Thuruht briefly took over the Galactic Alliance. It wasn't really because Reige turned out to be right not to leave, never mind the fact that the Remnant didn't have enough to support them in a would-be departure from the galaxy; it was really because Vansyn was proven wrong.

Sometimes, Moffs can be really petty, Reige thought.

The Head of State glared at Vansyn. "Is that a problem we shouldn't take into consideration any longer, Moff Vansyn?"

"By the time the Galactic Alliance and the Hapes Consortium destroy each other, of course it won't be a problem anymore," Vansyn threw back.

"Wouldn't it be more likely that the Consortium can win, given that they have the superior numbers at this point?" Moff Tol Getelles asked Vansyn.

Vansyn looked annoyed as he stared at Getelles. "You think the Alliance can't get their numbers back up, Tol?"

"Not in time anyway, no," Getelles answered.

Reige allowed a groan of exasperation to escape him. "Well, let's pretend that the Alliance did gather up their numbers again, and let's assume that the Alliance and Consortium do destroy each other in an all-consuming war, allowing the Empire to take over what's left. There's still the problem of maintaining our hold on the galaxy."

"Oh, like the Empire didn't do that before," Vansyn replied sarcastically.

"And where did that land this government?" Reige argued. "Into this very spot."

Calron the Younger spoke up. "While I openly admit that I, and many of my fellow Moffs, Head of State, are at best tolerant of your regime, I must also admit that you were a better leader than Palpatine ever was. We would not suffer the same defeat against a meager rebellion that he died twice from!"

Moff Natasi Daala looked pointedly at Reige. "Head of State, if you wish to prove Calron's words, perhaps you could start by implementing certain improvements in the Imperial education system for the next generation. Particularly in the history aspect." She then leveled her one-eyed gaze at Calron. "To say that Palpatine was a feeble leader and that the Alliance to Restore the Republic was a 'meager rebellion' demonstrates a significant level of historical ignorance."

Calron snorted. "Historical ignorance? Let me remind you, Moff Daala, that Palpatine would have never instated you as one of us due to your gender. The fact that Head of State Reige keeps you in this Council in spite of your very own actions in ruling the Galactic Alliance and in resorting to illegal methods to try to defeat Jagged Fel shows that Reige is a better leader than Palpatine could ever aspire to be."

"Enough of this," Reige cut in curtly. "This is going nowhere. The fact remains is that the Empire will not lay its claim with the galaxy, no matter what happens in the war that will ensue between the Alliance and the Consortium."

"Even if they do destroy each other, after all?" Vansyn asked. "If both governments are dead, we'd be leaving the galaxy open to anarchy and chaos. If there is one thing we can all agree on, Palpatine never vouched for either of those things."

"I agree that it would be irresponsible for the Empire to just let the rest of the galaxy die along with the Galactic Alliance and the Hapes Consortium, should that war between them result in mutual destruction," Reige ceded.

"So you agree that we should take what's left?" Vansyn asked, hopeful.

"Only if there's nothing left to reestablish order, yes," Reige said pointedly.

Vansyn's cold smile sent tingles up Reige's spine, and the only thing the Head of State could do to repress it was to add, "Of course, as Moff Getelles has pointed out, Moff Vansyn, it's more likely that the Consortium will win anyway."

Vansyn's expression dropped into something neutral before he gave a barely-restrained snort at Getelles. The latter Moff kept his composure, if only to show that he was more mature, like a child trying to prove to an adult that he could be trusted more than any of the other children in the room.

"Do we all agree on this matter?" Reige asked.

All of the other Moffs silently nodded their agreement, even if some, like Daala and Calron, still gave each other death stares.

"Then this session is adjourned," Reige concluded before standing up.

.

Given his injuries from that torture session headed by Captain Mirax Horn, it took Jaden a good four hours straight to travel from her office to the _Recovery_, where he was in desperate need of the ship's namesake. To at least dull the pain once he reached the medbay, he took some depressants that relaxed the aches that wandered his body. He then managed to pour some alcohol on some bacta patches that he placed on his burned knees, and while the stings were painful, they were nothing compared to the brutality that the loved ones of some of the dead Jedi gave him.

That entire process took about two hours, leaving him about five before Mirax made good on her death threat on him.

From then on, Jaden used the limited knowledge he had on self-healing through the Force to tone down the pains even further before he headed for the _Recovery_'s cockpit. Obviously, he still wasn't in any real good shape to be flying a spacecraft, but given that he might actually killed by a woman, who Jaden thought was safe to say was - in his mind, at least - psychotic, who grieved for the loss of practically her entire family, the Grand Master of the one-member Jedi Order thought it was a better idea to just leave.

It only took a few minutes to power up the _Recovery_ before he flew it out of the _Errant Ventu__re_'s cockpit. From there, he input the coordinates of his destination: Chandrila.

Then the _Venture_ was behind him in the stream of long white streaks that was hyperspace.


	5. Chapter 5

Allana was snapped out of her meditation in her bedchamber when there came a knock on the door.

"Allana?" the voice of her mother came from the other end.

Hurriedly, the Chume'da rushed over to her desk and opened up her homework books to random pages before running back to the door. When she stopped there, she took the time to compose herself before she unlocked and opened up the entrance for Tenel Ka.

The Queen Mother looked down upon her daughter with scrutiny before directing her gaze to her homework books. She then looked back upon Allana and shook her head. "Nice try, young lady. I felt you meditating through the Force, you cannot fool me with randomly-open books that make it appear as if you were studying."

Allana looked back up at her mother with an annoyed expression. "Sorry I didn't show up at that council meeting today, Mother."

"The only reason that I allowed you to get away when I knew you were lying about delving into your academic studies," Tenel Ka stated, "was because I had no time to argue with you." She then took out a spare datapad from her belt. "Here is a recording of the session. You must know how to act as Queen Mother when you inherit the throne one day."

Allana reluctantly took the 'pad from her mother's hand. "Thank you, Mother," she said in a tone that was neither genuine nor rude.

"Now tell me, why did you lie to me, Allana?" Tenel Ka asked.

"Because I didn't wanna go to that session," Allana stated simply.

Tenel Ka regarded her daughter in askance. "What do you mean you did not want to go? I understand that it would not be fun, but you cannot turn that down simply because you did not want to attend."

Allana exasperated. "When I dueled Darth Plagueis," she started, "I achieved this feeling of letting myself go and allowing the Force to dictate my actions, something I allowed Plagueis to know before I defeated him. And in that moment, I knew things that no mortal being could ever comprehend, and I was more of a channel of the Force's will than any other Jedi who ever lived. Except for one."

"Your father," Tenel Ka concluded.

Allana raised an eyebrow. "You know?"

Tenel Ka nodded. "Before he departed for his journey following the Yuuzhan Vong War, he told his parents about when he defeated their leader, Onimi. After he died as Darth Caedus, in one of the few times I was able to speak to your grandparents, Grandma Leia told me about what he experienced when he killed the Supreme Overlord. Your grandmother phrased your father exactly in what he told her and Grandpa Han to me, and your words described just that." Her expression fell into one of grave concern.

"You think I'll fall just like Dad did, don't you?" Allana discerned from her mother's look.

"Let us just say," Tenel Ka said, "that as long as I live, you will not be going on any sojourns to learn from different Force sects to try to reattain that moment you experienced."

"I don't think I'll need to hear any dogmas to try to reattain what I experienced," Allana said. "And I know all too well about how consuming the dark side of the Force is, Mother. I won't fall like Dad did."

"Yet you still persist to reattain what you felt when you defeated Plagueis," Tenel Ka pointed out. "One of the things your grandmother told me that your father told her was that he knew that he could never get that moment back, even when he knew that he would spend the rest of his life trying. Do you feel that you will never get that moment back, child?"

"I do feel that, Mother," Allana answered reluctantly.

"But you will continue to try, will you not?" Tenel Ka persisted.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"When you have such a moment, Mother," Allana replied, "you try not to get it back even when you know the futility of it."

"Then you will not be surprised that I now worry about you, Allana," Tenel Ka stated.

"You should worry more about the Consortium," Allana argued. "Because you decided to listen to the Duchas and proceed with wiping out the Alliance, haven't you? I don't need to see the vid recording or even get an intuition from the Force to discern that."

"I had no choice. I hope that you will never have to make such a decision when you inherit the throne," Tenel Ka said in a genuinely remorseful tone.

"At least you didn't bother saying, 'If you were in my position, you would understand,'" Allana countered.

"Well, at the very least, the Consortium will receive minimal fleet losses, given the plan that I had outlined in that video recording on that datapad," Tenel Ka pointed to the 'pad still in her daughter's hand. "As I have said, you should watch it, so that if you do have to make these decisions after all as Queen Mother, you will know how to handle them." She then turned to leave Allana's bedchamber.

"What if I don't want to become Queen Mother?"

Tenel Ka stopped and turned back to face her daughter, her look sympathetic. "I once thought the same thing, believe it or not. And my own mother and my father accepted that, and my grandmother could not be happier to not have a Jedi as Queen Mother. But when Grandma Tenenial died, and the Yuuzhan Vong decided to invade Hapes, times became desperate. And I had no choice but to take my mother's place. That may very well happen to you."

"Then let's hope that doesn't happen either," Allana said.

Tenel Ka sighed. "Allana, I do not trust anyone else with the throne. You are the only one that I can be assured will run the Consortium toward a more progressive state."

"Progressive state?" Allana retorted. "I don't see you allowing men equal rights to women."

"Well then, perhaps you will be the Queen Mother to do so."

Allana rolled her eyes. "Why can't you do it then?"

"Because such a change is still too drastic for Consortium society," Tenel Ka said.

"And it won't be any less drastic when it comes time for me to take your place?" Allana threw back. "You might as well get it over with now. Or are you too scared to implement that?"

"If I could, I would," Tenel Ka said. "But we are at war now. We cannot afford to divert our efforts to male emancipation."

"So, again, what really stopped you when the Consortium wasn't at war?" Allana inquired. "You have more power than all of the Duchas combined. You're the veto to any proposition they put forward. You are the Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium, you have the ultimate power! So why aren't you using it to end this segregation between the two genders in the Transitory Mists, or why haven't you done this before?"

Tenel Ka opened her mouth to reply, only to realize that no words emerged. She realized that she couldn't think up a good reason as to why she didn't allow male emancipation to occur before, such as the period between the Yuuzhan Vong War and the Second Galactic Civil War, or between that conflict and the war against the Lost Tribe of the Sith, or even between that and the Second Swarm War, or even before Wynn Dorvan was replaced by Gerila Shesh as Alliance Chief of State.

Finally, her expression resolved into one of determination as she locked eyes with her daughter. "This is not up for discussion any further. Now you will watch that video recording to understand how to handle matters as a Queen Mother. I must be elsewhere."

"State secret?"

"Fact." And with no more words, Tenel Ka left her daughter's bedroom.


	6. Chapter 6

With the _Recovery_ having another two hours before it eventually dropped out of hyperspace to reach Chandrila, Jaden took another pill of pain suppressant - his third one since he left the _Errant Venture_ mere hours before - and allowed himself to relax into meditation in the pilot seat.

But instead of clearing his head, Jaden found his mind drifting irrevocably toward sleep. The resultant dream then took him back some time before Luke Skywalker was exiled from Coruscant by Chief of State Daala.

_"Why didn't you tell me, Marr?" Jaden asked his former apprentice in the middle of one of the corridors of Coruscant's Jedi Temple._

_"I didn't think it was something that you needed to know, Jaden," Marr answered with a hesitant tone._

_"You thought I didn't need to know what you did to me?" Jaden nearly exclaimed. "I'm not inhabiting my proper body anymore!" The man who would one day become the last of Luke Skywalker's Jedi Order had discovered that he was inhabiting a clone body of his. That came about near the end of his, Marr, and their friend Khedryn Faal's chase for the Jedi-Sith clones produced during Grand Admiral Thrawn's time.  
_

_When Jaden and Marr were fighting an Umbaran that the former managed to kill, Jaden fell unconscious from the conflict, allowing a clone of his, provided by that Umbaran, to use a Rakatan mindspear to kill Jaden by transferring his consciousness into the spear. Marr was able to overpower the clone and used the mindspear to transfer Jaden's consciousness into his killer, reviving him and disposing of Jaden's corpse before he woke up in his new body. Marr had managed to deform Jaden's new body so he wouldn't suspect a thing, but sometime following the defeat of the entity known as Mother, Jaden picked up clues as to what had occurred to him, such as the imperfections of his scars and Marr's suspicious behavior around him._

_"I didn't have any choice!" Marr replied. "The previous owner of that body killed you! In order to bring you back, I had to transfer your mind into your clone."  
_

_"Then why didn't you just tell me that?" Jaden asked. "You didn't think I'd find out eventually? What, does Khedryn know, too?"_

_"No, Khedryn's still in the dark about this, as far as I know," Marr answered. "But really, I didn't want you to know because... I thought it'd be too painful for you, Jaden."_

_Jaden shook his head. "How could you be so stupid, Marr? You managed to gain the rank of Jedi Knight in under six months, and you're able to calculate hyperspace jumps without the need of a computer, yet you thought I couldn't handle what you did for me? All you had to do was tell me. You really disappointed me, not only as a Jedi, but as a friend."_

_"Well, how was I supposed to tell you?" Marr asked._

_"You could've just come out with it!" Jaden exclaimed. "I'm not really upset that I'm not in my actual body, I'm upset that you didn't tell me as soon as possible!"_

_"I'm sorry, Jaden," Marr said with a bow of his head. "Really, I am."  
_

_Without another word, Jaden turned away from his former apprentice and friend, walking away and leaving Marr alone._

_They never saw each other again afterward._

The beeping of the _Recovery_'s timer quickly woke Jaden up, and he saw that had he now had less than ten seconds to pull out of hyperspace. Hurriedly, he pulled down the lever before him, and soon, the long streaks of light-speed resolved into those of distant white pinpricks in the black velvet of realspace. Dominating the foreground seen through the _Recovery_'s viewport was the blue-and-green world of Chandrila.

Almost immediately, the _Recovery_'s inset commlink beeped. Jaden promptly answered it.

"Hapan shuttle _Recovery_," a strong, feminine voice - most likely belonging to a human, Jaden thought - responded, "what is your business here?"

"Medical attention," Jaden replied. "And I am here to visit former Jedi apprentices."

The other line was silent for a while before the same voice came back with, "Is this Grand Master Jaden Korr of the Jedi Order?"

"It is," Jaden answered.

"Then, by all means, welcome to Chandrila, Grand Master Korr. If you will stay right there, we will grant you whatever medical attention you need." The voice that had once been objective about Jaden's intentions now sounded slightly flustered.

"Thank you," Jaden said gratefully before cutting off the line.

He then allowed himself to relax just enough to wait for the medical frigate that soon appeared coming from the distant surface of the planet ahead. Jaden also allowed himself a small smile at the fact that he was receiving this rather prestigious treatment from the Chandrilans because of what he did thirty-one years earlier; at thirteen years old or so, Jaden had stopped a Sith cult led by the dead Dark Jedi Tavion Axmis from committing their diabolical plans in the now-ruined Jedi Temple on Chandrila. For this, it seemed as if Jaden made himself into quite a hero among the Chandrilans, he thought.

However, just as he was getting his hopes up with the medical frigate approaching him, his danger sense tingled, and suddenly, the frigate now hundreds of meters away began firing lasers at his ship. The _Recovery_'s shields held, which allowed the still-wounded Jaden to take hold of the ship's steering yoke and pilot it away.

Before he could plot another jump through hyperspace, Jaden rocked forward with the rest of the ship when a particularly forceful impact hit it from behind. He gave a quick readout on the sensors to find that the _Recovery_'s hyperdrive was out. Another impact occurred, and the sensors told Jaden that both the thrusters and the engine was out.

"Now you're ours, Korr," the previously-flustered voice said. Her tone now dripped with pure malice.


	7. Chapter 7

Theoretically, it wouldn't be easy to send in spies from the Transitory Mists to the space of the Galactic Alliance, or vice versa. Any ship traveling between the Alliance and Hapes Consortium territories that wasn't a military vessel, aided by a sizable fleet, was bound to be caught by the patrolling forces of either government. It would have been all the more difficult for the Hapans had the Alliance wielded more forces to be on the lookout for potential enemies in the Outer Rim.

But since the latter government was primarily concerned with building up their own forces to at least match the power of their enemies' infamous Battle Dragons, they didn't know that the Consortium's spies managed to sneak out the back of the Transitory Mists to travel around their own territory in convincing mockups of Alliance-owned vessels. One would say that such a process a very simplistic approach, but then, another would reply, "That's why it would work."

The entire process from which these undercover spies had traveled between the Mists to the worlds of Coruscant, Corulag, Borleias, and it only took a number of hours for each of them.

Of course, that wasn't to say that the Alliance wasn't doing something similar.

It was roughly a day after the spies' departure from Consortium territory. On the inner edge of the Mists, an Alliance shuttle, which could be recognized by any Hapan soldier as one of the fakes made for their own spies, dropped out of hyperspace before a fleet patrol. Before the shuttle could be hailed by any of the Battle Dragons, a squadron of Alliance starfighters also dropped out of hyperspace, and continued firing at the rear of their predecessor. The craft's shields were apparently gone, as holes were ripped through the shuttle's hull to expose gas and several other materials out in the vacuum of space.

It wasn't long, however, before the starfighters turned away once the pilots saw Miy'til fighters dropping out of the hangar bays of the Battle Dragons ahead. The Alliance fighters disappeared back into hyperspace as quickly as they had arrived.

The Miy'tils also turned back and returned to the hangar bays of their Dragons. During the time, the Hapan shuttle that had been pursued by the Alliance fighters was finally hailed.

"Shuttlecraft One-Nine-Six-Two, is anyone aboard injured?" a masculine female voice asked from the other end of the shuttle's inset comm.

"We're all okay," the ship's captain, a blonde-haired woman of typical Hapan beauty, replied in the same language and accent as the woman on the other end of the comm transmission. "But we were found out in the Alliance. We didn't know how they realized who we were, but we barely escaped with our lives."

"Where do you and your crew members hail from, Captain...?" the voice on the other end asked, implying that she wanted a name.

"Hapes," the captain replied. "We all hail from Hapes. And, Commander Gebbam, you know that it's me, Captain Pullam."

"Indeed, you are, Captain," Gebbam replied. "I was just making sure."

"Sure about what?" Pullam asked.

"That you weren't Alliance spies," Gebbam answered.

"I can assure you, Commander, that we haven't failed so badly as to be overpowered and be replaced by imposters," Pullam said.

"No, but since you were caught, doubtless would the Alliance come to the conclusion that their ranks have now been infiltrated by Hapan spies, if they haven't figured that out already," Gebbam countered harshly. "I would say that you have failed pretty badly here, Captain Pullam."

"Yes, I have," Pullam replied in a genuinely remorseful tone.

"Now we will have to alert our spies that they now stand a higher risk of having their safety compromised behind enemy lines," Gebbam stated. "You and your crew will face a severe reprimand back on Hapes for your failure, Captain."

"I know," Pullam stated. "And my crew and I will gladly face execution, if it comes to that."

"It always helps to be prepared," Gebbam replied wryly before returning to her more fitting militant tone. "You are to report to the hangar bay of my Battle Dragon at these coordinates." Two seconds later, a series of numbers appeared on the shuttle's console.

"Thank you, Commander," Pullam said. "Is there anything else?"

"That will do, Captain," Gebbam said before signing off on the transmission.

Pullam then began piloting her shuttle toward the fleet. Her copilot, a redhead Hapan, then said, "You know, Wraith Three, with a performance like that, you could really replace Wraith Two as the team's actor."

The captain - rather, the imposter who had replaced her, Myri Antilles - gave a sideways smile at her fellow Wraith before turning off the voice scrambler that made her sound like the late Hapan Captain Pullam and replacing it in her belt. "Nah. I couldn't get into the enemy's head like Two could, Five."

"True," Wraith Five - Jesmin Tainer - replied with a noncommittal nod. Clawdite Wraith Two, Turman Durra, was as passionate in his dramatic arts as he was about being a member of Wraith Squadron.

"Speaking of getting into heads, though," Myri said, her tone more serious now, "you still haven't told me, or anyone else in the team, what that two-week sabbatical of yours was."

Jesmin glared at Myri. "You know that One isn't dead yet, right?"

Myri set the shuttle on autopilot and looked back at her friend in askance. "Yes?"

"Well, since that's the case, and since he said that I don't have to tell any of you about what happened, it still remains none of your business, Myri."

Myri's curious expression turned more into sympathy. "It's about Doran, isn't it?"

Jesmin then began clapping in mockery of Myri's discovery. "Bravo. Bravo. It was more stunning when Wraith Four figured it out before you, though."

"You went and did something for Doran, didn't you?" Myri said. "Something you don't have a clear conscious on."

"What makes you say that?" Jesmin asked in mild derision.

"If you didn't feel guilty about it," Myri said, "you'd have no problem telling me or anyone else in the squad. And you wouldn't have this attitude either."

Jesmin's nostrils flared and then she stood up. Myri glared back at her with a mixture of caution and concern, not so much for herself so much as it was for her childhood friend.

But all Jesmin did was say, "I'm gonna thaw out One before we have to debark." She left the cockpit without another word.

Myri turned back and saw that they were closing in on the Battle Dragon they had to arrive at. She turned off the autopilot and continued to cruise casually toward it.


	8. Chapter 8

As soon as the _Recovery_'s hyperdrive, thrusters, and engines were destroyed, the ship itself had been penetrated by a metallic cable that then flooded all of the insides of vessel with coma gas. Jaden didn't stand a chance against it before he fell unconscious from the white fume.

When he next awoke, he found himself chained up against a wall by his wrists and ankles, his feet a meter off the ground, in an old-fashioned, stonewall dungeon with no windows to the outside world. The only way in or out of the dungeon was through a door that was currently locked, and Jaden saw his bare, brown surroundings because of the dim light bulb placed on the ceiling, which projected yellow light.

Jaden's robes, his lightsaber, and pretty much everything else except for his trousers were all gone, leaving him naked from the waist up.

On the plus side, Jaden thought, his body was no longer endowed with pain, and when he craned his neck downward, he noticed that the wounds he suffered were all gone. He also realized that his face felt like it had healed from the burning that Aryn Thul administered to him for torture. Most likely, while he'd been out, he was placed in a bacta tank, though he didn't understand why his captors would make good on what was supposedly their lie, given how they captured him.

The Grand Master then looked up from assessing his body of its now-non-existent injuries when he heard the door off to his left begin unlocking. A second later, it opened up, revealing a gray-redheaded woman of modest height, dressed in a plain white robe, with two burly human male security guards wearing Chandrilan security uniforms. The guard to the rather old woman's right held the key that locked the door.

Looking at the woman, Jaden swore that he saw the late Mon Mothma, Leia Organa Solo's predecessor in the place of New Republic Chief of State.

"Wait here," the woman nodded to the guards.

They nodded back in obeisance and allowed their charge to enter the dungeon alone. The guard who didn't hold the key shut the door, but it didn't lock.

The dungeon was silent for several moments as the woman gradually walked forward before stopping midway. She casually turned in Jaden's direction and glared at him.

"Do you know who I am, Grand Master Korr?" the woman asked.

"Should I?" Jaden asked, his voice completely neutral. Saying that exact thing in a derisive tone before his captor would most likely make things worse.

"I'm not surprised," the woman replied in the tone that Jaden just suppressed. "You Jedi don't know or care who you take children from, so long as they make good apprentices for you."

Jaden raised an eyebrow. "What are you talking about?"

The woman snorted. "Let me start from the beginning then," she said, her tone no less harsh. "My name is Jeila Humda. I was a former Jedi apprentice during the dying years of Yoda's Order. I managed to survive Palpatine's Purge to return here to my homeworld. But when I got back here, I figured out that my mother had committed suicide because she couldn't handle knowing that she would never see her daughter again. From then on, I vowed never to have anything to do with the Jedi Order ever again.

"But since you showed up here, looking to reclaim your former Jedi apprentices to restart your Order again," Humda continued, "I'm afraid I can't allow you to leave."

"Do you plan on killing me?" Jaden asked.

"As much as I hate the Jedi Order for making my mother kill herself," Humda said, "I do agree with the tenant to never kill out of vengeance, or even to murder a helpless thing like you. It could lead me to the dark side of the Force, after all, and I must say, Sith and Dark Jedi are much worse than Jedi. No, I'm not going to kill you, Master Korr. I'm just going to keep you here for the rest of your life, and let the last of the Jedi Order die off, never to force their views on the rest of the galaxy ever again."

"How did you know that I was looking to reclaim some former apprentices?" Jaden asked.

"Notwithstanding the fact that you told the transmission officer in orbit," Humda began, "I, along with many other Chandrilans, were aware of the dozens of Jedi apprentices that returned here, stripped of their Jedi statuses when the Galactic Alliance took you away from Shedu Maad. I'll give Kenth Hamner this, he was at least selfless enough to spare the students of imprisonment under the Alliance."

"Can I at least ask whether or not any of the students want to return to the Order?" Jaden asked.

"No, you may not, Master Korr," Humda replied sternly.

"So what's to stop me from escaping, right here, right now?" Jaden asked.

"The fact that this room will fill up with coma gas should you try to escape, and you won't be able to make it to the door even at your fastest under Force speed," Humda answered. She pointed out the small black holes at the top of all four corners of the dungeon.

"Any other precautions I should know about?" Jaden asked.

"Aside from me with my own lightsaber and my skills?" Humda asked, indicating the cylindrical weapon her belt. "I never saw any reason why there should be anymore precautions."

"Then you're a hell of a fool," Jaden said.

His body then radiated a powerful Force wave that knocked Humda back into the wall behind her. She collapsed in an unconscious heap just as the holes in the corners of the room that would have exposed coma gas into the dungeon suddenly closed up. At the same time, the binds of Jaden's shackles opened, and he dropped to the floor in a crouch.

In response to the commotion that just occurred, the door opened, revealing the two burly guards still there. They bared their blasters for Jaden, but the Grand Master reached out both hands and used the Force to yank the weapons out of their hands. They slapped into his own, quickly set them both for stun, and fired both the guards in the chest, one shot from each gun, and they were knocked out in an instant.

Jaden used the Force again to disassemble the blasters in his hands before reaching out for Humda's lightsaber. It flew into his hand, and with that, he rose from his crouch and sprang out the door.


	9. Chapter 9

Upon leaping out through the exit of the dungeon, Jaden, without hesitation, sent out a Force wave from each hand. Naturally, the guards who were there at both ends - two in each direction - were knocked out by the invisible waves.

Then he whirled around and used the Force to send the unconscious bodies of the guards he knocked out with the stun blasts back into the dungeon. Jaden then saw not only Humda's form stirring, but also saw vidcam mounted on the ceiling of the dungeon that he failed to notice initially. Those sights thus prompted him to use the Force again to crush the camera before slamming the door shut. He quickly rushed to the pad set next to the door and pressed the LOCK button.

Just as the dungeon door locked, Jaden's danger sense tingled again, so he leaped up into the air to grab the air-vent grate on the ceiling. Two more guards appeared at both ends of the hallway to assess the unconscious forms of their colleagues before looking back toward the locked dungeon area.

Jaden used the precious two seconds he had before the four guards noticed him hanging above, so he sent out one more Force wave from each hand to knock them out, as well. They were on the floor before their attacker even landed.

But then, just when he hit the floor, his danger sense tingled again. However, instead of jumping back up for the ceiling again, he erected a Force wall around himself so that the dungeon door that was blown off a microsecond later glanced off to his right. In the door's place stood an angry-looking Jeila Humbda.

"Give me back my lightsaber, Master Korr," she intoned.

"You first," he retorted. "I'll give you one chance to rid yourself of this vendetta you have against the Jedi, Humda, and allow me to leave."

Humda sneered. "Or what?"

In response, he rapidly expanded his Force wall to knock Humbda back again. She didn't fall unconscious, though; she was only momentarily stunned. That forced Jaden to make a decision gut-based decision, which was to turn right and bolt, allowing his Force wall to drop to nothingness.

When his danger sense tingled again halfway to the intersection of the corridor, Jaden whirled around and sent another Force wave against Humbda, who was just descending upon him from the air. However, when she hit the floor, she executed a backward roll and came up in a crouch before sprinting back for Jaden.

The latter then exerted both arms, channeling the Force through them to blast against the floor between him and the approaching Humbda. Chunks of floor then flew up against the former Jedi, and when she flew back, she landed unconscious. Jaden sensed that it would be quite a while before she got back up. With that, he saw cameras mounted at both corners of the corridor's intersections, so naturally, he sent out a Force wave to each of them simultaneously to destroy them.

Now, seeing as how he didn't know where he was going anyway, Jaden decided to continue following what his gut told him and resumed his trek back down the corridor to reach its intersection.

When he reached the intersection, he saw the four guards who were knocked unconscious there beginning to stir awake. Promptly, he sent another Force wave against them, and they were out again. He turned back to find the four guards at the other end continue their own awakening, which coerced Jaden to quickly grab one of the guards and drag him out of sight with him.

Down the intersection, Jaden saw a turbolift twenty meters away and closing. He also noticed yet another camera mounted just above it. Again, Force wave, and it was done recording anything.

However, he also knew that once the four guards at the other end of the corridor he just left all saw their downed comrades, all they'd have to do is turn their heads to the right and find him slugging one of their own across the floor. Sure, at least one or two of them would take a little detour to investigate whether or not Humbda, or even their brethren in the dungeon, were still alive, but even assuming that all four of them would check up on their mistress and their colleagues each, that still didn't give Jaden enough time to even make it to the elevator.

Fortunately for the Grand Master, just as he heard their incoming footsteps around the corner, he saw a janitor's closet off to his left. Hoping that it was open, he pulled on the handle, and thankfully, it opened up soundlessly. So, without any hesitation, he dragged the guard in with him and closed the door just as two of the guards appeared to kneel at their unconscious colleagues.

Inside the janitor's closet, Jaden blindly reached around before finding a switch that ignited the light above him. With clear vision now, he then began undressing the guard. When his unconscious charge offered a low groan, indicating his return to consciousness, Jaden just grabbed his forehead with his full-fingered palm and sent a minor Force reverberation through his mind that quickly lulled him back to sleep. The Grand Master continued with his progress unhindered at that point.

Roughly a minute later, Jaden was now suited up in the guard's uniform, and completed his wear by placing his eye-concealing helmet on top of his head. The guard, meanwhile, had been stripped down only to his underwear, undershirt, and socks.

Before leaving the janitor's closet, Jaden reached out through the Force to find no beings within his immediate vicinity; apparently, the already-awakened guards and their more recently-awakened colleagues were more concerned with Humda's fate, and they all had the thought of carrying her to this building's medward. Either these guards were stupid to leave their posts to any potential intruders, or they all thought that they should accompany their mistress to the medward to somehow psychologically redeem themselves of their failure. Either way, it worked for Jaden.

With assurance that he was alone, save for the still-unconscious guard, he opened the door, closed it behind him, and headed for the turbolift.


	10. Chapter 10

A typically peaceful yet fast-paced day on Coruscant was instantly ruined once brief explosions can be seen through the skies. Everyone on the upper levels chattered among themselves and pointed up toward the ruins of the Star Destroyers that had ended up as the victims of these explosions. It wasn't long before some of these Destroyers were completely obliterated against the upper shields of the planet of which they orbited, which prompted even more horrified reactions from the populace who acted as witness to this tragic event.

Naturally, from his austere office in the Imperial Palace, Chief of State Rodan was informed of the losses of those Destroyers and their crews as he watched the resultant news broadcast by Perre Needmo. Several key military figures, such as Gavin Darklighter and Tycho Celchu were lost among those explosions.

Rodan was also informed via commlink messages that similar events were happening over Borleias, Fondor, Commenor, and other Alliance-held worlds. In a matter of hours, Rodan was able to get a figure from several military analytic experts who all agreed that given these further losses, it would take another year before the Galactic Alliance could proceed with their war against the Hapes Consortium.

With a timetable like that, Rodan obviously had to make a public announcement to the media again, which he doubted would be his last in his term of office. And as if to symbolize the horror of what had happened earlier that day, a dark night had fallen over the sector of Coruscant from which the Imperial Palace stood, and from which Rodan would make his announcement to the press.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced behind his raised podium, "today, we have suffered a grand tragedy the likes of which have not been seen since the end of the conflict between the Jedi Order and the Lost Tribe of the Sith a mere year ago. And from what the specialists in the military have told me, it will be another twelve months before we can be completely ready to make an attack on the Transitory Mists." Questions were instantly raised among the crowd of press representatives, and Rodan first tried to wave them silent so he could continue. Then he spoke in his microphone, silencing them all instantly. "For all those wondering, I want to make it absolutely clear that we are not declaring a surrender to this war. If anything, from what the Hapans have just done-"

"How do you know that it was the Hapans who did this, Chief of State Rodan?" someone in the crowd asked.

"While I admit that we do not yet have any solid evidence that could even hint that Hapan spies were responsible for possible sabotage against our Star Destroyers," Rodan began, "I can assure you that, personally, I have no doubts that the Consortium was responsible for this calamity. And if it turns out that it was a terrorist sect unrelated to our direct enemies in this war, then I will, without hesitation, withdraw my claims about Hapan spies being responsible in this instance. Until then, I must ask all of you, in turn, whether you have any doubts that it was the Hapans who did this?"

"I have no doubts either, Chief of State," that same individual who questioned Rodan spoke up before anyone else. She was a brunette female human who was quite attractive.

The Chief of State nodded at the reporter, internally satisfied that he had someone who questioned him on his side. Such support would be needed in his administration if he was to continue this war against the Hapans.

"Because I'm one of those spies," the reporter said before she drew a blaster and aimed it at Rodan.

The Chief of State was instantly tackled to the ground by one of his guards just as the Hapan spy pulled the trigger. The lethal bolt whizzed by where Rodan's head was just a second earlier, and continued to fly through the air.

And just like that, chaos erupted among the crowd of reporters, who dispersed every which way they could find away from Rodan's would-be assassin. Some actually fell over the guardrails stationed along the ledges of the plaza leading up toward the Imperial Palace, and those unfortunate reports plunged to their deaths hundreds of stories below. The Hapan herself, in spite of her stunning features, was still able to blend in with the mob of cowering individuals in her attempt to escape.

It didn't help to quell the chaos when one of the snipers for Galactic Alliance Security managed to get a lock on the Hapan and blow her head off with a single laser.

.

The turbolift stopped and its doors whooshed open, allowing Jaden to enter a lobby of some kind. Various beings of mixed species seemed to wander around, heading towards differing directions to attend to whatever duties of activities they had on schedule.

It wasn't long before Jaden spotted two guards in a corner of the lobby, and a second later, they spotted him, as well. They then began heading in his direction.

Seeing as how his cover was blown now, the Grand Master broke into a run for the lobby's exit, and he gave one brief glance back to see that, predictably, those two guards were also sprinting for him.

Jaden managed to Force-leap over several beings who gave surprised looks at his departing form while the guards now on his tail were forced to slow in their progress so as to not bump into any of the people in the lobby. In a matter of seconds, the automatic doors that made up the lobby's exit opened up, and he gave a single punch to the face with each hand to the guards who were stationed just outside. They collapsed to the ground unconscious and Jaden continued to run outside to find himself in a resort on one of Chandrila's beautiful beaches.

Turning to his left, he resumed his run to find some way to lose the two guards who were still on the chase for him.


	11. Chapter 11

The undercover members of Wraith Squadron were afforded spare cabins aboard Commander Gebbam's Battle Dragon, the _Queen's Liege_, for the purposes of bringing them, or rather "returning them," back to Hapes to face the consequences of the real crew's failure. None of them were kept as prisoners in their individual cabins, thankfully, so they, by Wraith Three's collective call via their commlinks, gathered in Myri's cabin. There, they would fall into discussing what had just happened a few hours earlier in the Galactic Alliance, and how it would subsequently affect their plans, if at all. No Hapan crew member wandering the corridors of the Dragon questioned them on their ways to the one cabin, either because they didn't care, or because they thought that the team wanted to gather together for mutual support in the wake of the failure of their own mission.

The team gathered around on the floor in the center of Myri's temporary cabin in a rough circle, and their leader, Wraith One, Voort "Piggy" saBinring, was present as a blue hologram emanating from Myri's datapad. Currently, the Gamorrean was aboard the Hapan shuttle, since his immense girth would have been too suspicious to disguise him as a beautiful, handsome Hapan. This was also why he had to undergo carbon freezing for a matter of hours so that his vital signs wouldn't have been detected by any of the Battle Dragons in the fleet that had picked up the shuttle from the pursuing Alliance starfighters.

Among the Wraiths who were physically gathered around in Myri's cabin, including Myri herself, were Turman Durra, the Clawdite actor disguised as a generic Hapan male; Jesmin Tainer, Myri's longtime childhood friend; Trey Courser, the mechanics specialist who looked like he could be a Hapan male without the need of a prosthetic; the disguised Extolled Yuuzhan Vong, Viull "Scut" Gorsat, concealed in a neoglith masquer that, for once, didn't make him look like he smiled perpetually; veteran Wraith Sharr Latt; Thaymes Fodrick, the computer slicer and communication specialist; and last but not least was Wran Narcassan, the squad's specialized sniper.

"It makes me wonder why you're all still bound to endure punishment for 'your' failure," Piggy commented, his artificial tone managing to carry a sadness for the lives lost against the Hapans recently. "It didn't seem to affect anything with the rest of the Hapans' sabotage in the Alliance."

"Well, until they tell us whether the plan to go to Hapes will change, we're still heading there," Myri affirmed. She then indicated with a nod of her head to one of the cabin's viewports, which showed the white-streaked blue of hyperspace that had only twice dissolved back into realspace, simply not to collide into any stars, since the _Queen's Liege_ left the system that the Alliance starfighters "chased" the captured Hapan shuttle to. "So we have no reason to worry just yet. I think we're still being 'punished' more on principle than anything else at this point."

"Unless, of course," Scut interjected, "they may have figured out, by now, that we're really spies, and they're still playing along to make sure we get our guard down before they prey upon us."

"So far, we've done everything to make sure that hasn't happened yet," Myri countered objectively. "I even made sure to sweep this room for bugs before we started this discussion. We're all clean here. And as far as worrying about anyone eavesdropping on this conversation outside this cabin, I made sure to soundproof my entire area before calling this meeting. If they wanted to take us out, we'd be taken out already, especially since we're all gathered together, right here, right now." She then looked at Piggy's hologram. "One, what about you? Anything so much as a suspicious look directed at the shuttle in the hangar bay so far?"

"The Hapans have left the shuttle alone since you all left, so I'm still safe and unseen from the inside," Piggy explained. "Regardless, I'd feel safer if we had our last two members on this mission."

Scut cut in with, "It's regretful that neither Huhunna nor Drikall could come, but given their Wookiee and Devaronian physiology respectively, and since the economy in the Alliance is pretty low for the military to afford anymore carbonite pods..."

"Thank you, Six," Piggy interrupted. "I was only reminiscing. My apologies for getting off topic. Anyway, let's go over the plan again just to make sure none of us have forgotten about it in the midst of what just happened back in friendly space.

"Three, if you would be so kind as to get Four in my line of sight." Myri then moved her datapad so that Piggy's image was facing Trey. "Four, get yourself ready. Six, hand over Four your specialized neoglith masquer. Head down to the Battle Dragon's center now. In a matter of hours, we'll be in the Hapes system, and the second we drop out of hyperspace, make sure that the engines, thrusters, and pretty much everything else except for life support goes offline as well. Five will come pick you up when we have to leave."

Trey nodded wordlessly, took the neoglith masquer that Scut offered him, placed it on himself, stood up, and left the cabin, allowing Myri to position the datapad again so that Piggy's image was facing her again.

"As for the rest of us," Piggy continued, "I'll send out the fake transmission that will allow us to go down to Hapes by ourselves. Everyone clear?"

"We are," they all answered unanimously.

"Then may the Force be with us all," Piggy said before signing off on the transmission.

.

Just when it seemed like the guards who chased him out of the resort building would catch up to him, Jaden surprised them by whirling around and kicking one of them in the face. That guard was unconscious before he hit the ground, and Jaden promptly dispatched his partner by punching him across the face. A second later, that guard joined his colleague on the ground.

Jaden turned back and continued to reach the end of the building that turned at an intersection, presumably the resort's exit.

"Halt!" yelled one of the two guards stationed at the exit of the resort as they bared their guns.

Jaden threw out both hands to send a wide Force wave to knock both guards out cold. They bounced against the sides of the open steel gate behind them before collapsing prone to the sand beneath them. Their Jedi attacker continued on as he rushed out and hurried across the street, which was currently empty of any passing hovervehicles that might have run him over.

Once he was across the street, he headed for a nearby alley, which turned out to be open-ended. He hurried over to hide behind a dumpster, where he then looked up to find several lines of clothes that were hanging out to dry. Grimacing, Jaden decided to put aside any doubt he had to do before stripping himself of the guard uniform and reaching out through the Force to steal a pair of pants, shoes, a shirt, and a hat that, while it didn't conceal his features like the helmet did, would still do nicely given the circumstances.

Soon, he was dressed up in the clothes he illegally obtained and threw the guard uniform and helmet into the dumpster. Then he proceeded to leave the alley through the other end.

_Now_, Jaden thought, _I have to visit those former Jedi apprentices, convince them to come back to the Order, and, even if I fail at convincing any of them, I still have to make sure I get off this planet without getting caught again._

_Why must I suffer for this Order?_


	12. Chapter 12

"Except for one team who were figured out, Your Majesty," reported the chamberlain, Poik, to Tenel Ka in the latter's throne room, "every team inserted into Alliance space has been successful in the rapid decrease in the enemies' forces."

"What happened to the failed team?" Tenel Ka asked.

"They should be returning to the system right about..." Poik looked at her wrist chrono before promptly looking back up to her Queen Mother. "Now, Your Majesty."

Tenel Ka then looked out toward the window in the throne room that revealed a Battle Dragon fleet dropping out of hyperspace, as could be seen through Hapes's skies. The Queen Mother looked back at Poik.

"Do you wish to see them, or would you rather have them executed immediately for their failure, Your Highness?" the chamberlain inquired.

"Can you tell me which shipyard they failed to sabotage first, Poik?" Tenel Ka asked.

"Uh, I believe it was..." The chamberlain trailed off, and the Queen Mother waited patiently as her servant took out her datapad from a pocket in her robe and turned it on to check something. A few seconds later, Poik looked back up to declare, "Bilbringi, Milady."

Tenel Ka placed her one hand on her chin in thought. "Bilbringi is a major shipyard for the Alliance," she thought aloud. A little while later, she came to the conclusion, "Send out the transmission that they are to be executed at once."

Poik nodded, then replaced her datapad with her commlink. She activated it and began tuning it to the frequency with which to contact the fleet. But after a while, the chamberlain's face dropped to a frown.

"What is it?" Tenel Ka demanded.

"I can't seem to contact Commander Gebbam of the _Queen's Liege_," Poik informed her without looking away from her commlink. The chamberlain then hurriedly looked back up to her Queen Mother, realizing her mistake of not properly addressing Her Royal Highness, and stuttered, "The _Liege_ was the flagship of the fleet that picked up the shuttle containing the Bilbringi sabotage crew."

"Then try one of the other vessels in the fleet, Poik," Tenel Ka said, apparently ignoring her chamberlain's minor mistake.

"Oh, yes, of course," Poik replied nervously before tuning her comm to a different frequency.

After a while, a militant female voice on the other end of Poik's commlink said, "This is the _Hapan Fearlessness_. You may respond."

"This is Poik, the personal chamberlain of the Queen Mother," Poik replied. "I can't seem to contact Commander Gebbam to inform her of the Bilbringi crew's fate, as addressed by Her Royal Highness."

"We will try contacting the commander," the voice stated. "What is the crew's fate, by the way?"

"They are to be executed as soon as possible," Poik answered. "The Queen Mother doesn't wish to see them to address their failure."

"Very well. We will try to contact them and let you know if we are successful."

"Thank you," Poik replied before deactivating her comm.

.

"_Hapan Fearlessness_, this is the _Queen's Liege_, please respond," stated the _Liege_'s comm officer at her station on the ship's bridge.

"This is the _Hapan Fearlessness_," the feminine voice at the other end replied. "What is it that you wish to communicate?"

"Almost every one of our vital systems have been shut down just after we dropped out of hyperspace," the comm officer answered. "Have you been contacted by the Queen Mother yet?"

"We have, _Liege_," the other voice replied. "She has stated that she wishes to see them at once, and they are allowed to visit her alone in the shuttle they traveled in."

.

"Very well," came back the voice from the Hapan shuttle's inset comm. "We will inform the crew at once, and they will join you soon._"_

Piggy's voice was filtered through the vocal scrambler implanted in his throat that made him sound like a militant Hapan female. "Thank you, _Liege_." The Gamorrean then shut down the transmission.

.

Poik's commlink beeped again, and she took it out of her pocket to activate it. "Yes?"

"This is the _Hapan Fearlessness_," the same voice that Poik just talked to responded. "We couldn't send out a transmission to the _Queen's Liege_."

Poik looked back up to Tenel Ka expectantly.

"Have they sent a shuttle to the _Liege_?" the Queen Mother asked.

"We already have, Your Majesty," the voice answered before Poik could communicate Her Majesty's words. "We were merely updating you on our progress."

"Thank you," Tenel Ka said. "Inform me when the Bilbringi crew members have been executed. That will be all."

"Of course, Your Highness," the voice responded. Then the transmission was shut off from the other side.

.

Aboard the _Liege_, Wraith Squadron didn't hesitate as they briskly walked down the corridors of the Battle Dragon for its hangar bay. Along the way, they were joined by Trey, who was no longer in the disguise provided to him by Scut's neoglith masquer.

One short turbolift trip down later, the squad reached the bay and resumed their walk for the Hapan shuttle.

Halfway to the shuttle, however, everyone present in the bay saw, through the hangar's blast shield, another shuttle depart from a nearby Battle Dragon.

"Five, Force shield," Myri whispered to Jesmin. "Everyone, break for it!"

The entire squad then burst into a run for their parked shuttle. In an instant, everyone else in the bay looked in their direction and called for them to stop. When none of the fleeing squad members obeyed, a few Hapans decided to take out their blasters, set them for stun, and aimed them for the fake Hapans. In the meantime, their intended shuttle started up its engines.

However, the squad's progress wasn't slowed a bit, as the bolts refracted off of Jesmin's Force shield. In a matter of seconds, Wraith Squadron had arrived for their shuttle, whose boarding ramp lowered to admit them. The second the last member, who was Jesmin, was aboard, the ramp closed up in an instant.

A few seconds later, under Piggy's piloting, the shuttle lifted off the hangar floor and headed out the _Queen's Liege_ for Hapes.


	13. Chapter 13

"I knew it," Tenel Ka muttered.

Poik looked at the Queen Mother in askance. "What did you know, Milady?"

"The crew meant to sabotage the Bilbringi shipyards," Tenel Ka answered. "They are Alliance spies. And they are heading for the planet, planning to bomb the Royal Palace." She stood up and headed for the exit of the throne room. "We must head for the underground bunker."

Poik watched as Tenel Ka walked toward the exit. "Wait, My Queen Mother, how do you know this?"

"I had a guess, which was why I ordered for their immediate execution," Tenel Ka replied without turning away or slowing down. She opened the doors and was joined by the door guards as they walked down the corridor for Allana's bedroom to gather the Chume'da for safety. "Then, shortly after you informed the _Fearlessness_ of my intentions for the failed crew, I sensed a Force-sensitive among that crew. I can now sense their intentions from that individual, and they are closing in on the planet as we speak."

"But they can be stopped, Your Majesty!" Poik argued just as they closed in on Allana's bedchamber. "There is no need to worry!"

"Not when it is Wraith Squadron," Tenel Ka responded evenly after knocking on the door to the Chume'da's cabin.

.

Piggy maneuvered and swerved the Hapan shuttle in various directions to avoid the laser blasts that were coming from the shuttle that was behind them, which was now aided by a squadron of Miy'til fighters adding to the fire. Yet, throughout all of the aversion from the lethal bolts coming in from behind, Piggy never veered his vehicle anywhere away from Hapes.

"We could use some cover fire back there!" Piggy exclaimed in response to the bumps that the shuttle was subjected to. It didn't help that the rear shields were being depleted, and Piggy figured that even if he did siphon power from the forward shields to the rear ones, it would still help very little.

"Five and I will take the rear turrets!" Wran announced from the passenger cabin.

The dark-skinned squad member then unbuckled his safety harness and was quickly joined by Jesmin as they made their way to the exit of the cabin at the back.

Less than half a minute later, red bolts began firing from the aft section of Wraith Squadron's shuttle. The pursuing shuttle and its accompanying Miy'tils immediately banked away in either direction from the stream of lasers, but not all of them were lucky to escape the onslaught that soon followed them.

"A quarter of the fighters are already out of commission!" Piggy reported this for the benefit of the Wraith passengers from what he saw on the comm sensors. "Keep it up, Five and Eight!"

"And let's hope the Hapans don't add anymore fighters to the mix," Sharr commented.

A quarter of a minute passed, and a few more Miy'tils were blasted away by Jesmin and Wran. They soon managed to cut down the fighter squad in half before Piggy piloted the shuttle through the top of Hapes's atmosphere. Then, not only did the pursuing shuttle and its remaining fighters have to contend with the continuous stream of laser bolts being fired by two Wraiths, but they also had to shoot blindly against the fiery entry that their charge was leaving behind.

Some time later, Wraith Squadron's shuttle entered the stratosphere and begin cooling off just as the still-pursuing shuttle and what Miy'tils it had left were just descending from the atmosphere. By the time they, too, were clearly visible in the skies, the fighters were down to about a quarter of their initial strength, and still counting down.

Once the enemy-held Hapan shuttle was only a few hundred meters from the Royal Palace, the Palace itself began spewing lasers up into the sky from the turrets mounted on its rooftop.

Now within the atmospheric folds of a planet, Piggy had to fight against the controls as he banked this way and that way from the lasers that were now coming in from before and below them. In the process, all those lasers from the Palace that had missed only added to the barrage that Jesmin and Wran were dishing out to the enemy vessels still above them.

"Jesmin, you think you can hold off those fighters and that shuttle on your own now?!" Piggy exclaimed.

"Yeah, I think so!" Jesmin replied. "Why?!"

"Wran, get over here and man the forward lasers!" Piggy yelled. As the Gamorrean heard a series of footsteps heading for the cockpit, he continued, as he still flew forward and around the lasers in front and behind them, "Take out those turrets on top of the Palace!"

Wran was in the copilot seat before Piggy finished that last sentence and immediately obeyed his leader's orders. In a matter of seconds, the roof-mounted turrets on the Royal Palace were destroyed in a brilliant array of explosions prompted by the lasers Wran fired.

Meanwhile, just after Jesmin took out the last Miy'til that was still after them, she scored a hit against the opposing shuttle's hull that blasted through their viewport, thanks to their forward shields getting knocked out from the constant laser barrage. However, just before the shuttle began to descend away from its pursuit to meet an explosive death on the forest ground below, it managed to fire off one last laser that struck the Wraiths' shuttle's engine.

"We're going down a lot faster than we planned!" Piggy announced back to the passenger cabin. "Prepare for a crash-landing, everyone!"

Although the engine was out, Piggy was still able to pilot the shuttle for one final move using only the thrusters.

And in the end, the shuttle managed to enter the hangar bay of the Royal Palace, skid along the deck for several meters, during which Piggy quickly shut off the thrusters, and then, in a matter of seconds, it came to a gradual stop bare inches before it would have collided with another parked shuttle.

"Another happy landing," Piggy commented with a sigh of relief.


	14. Chapter 14

As soon as Wraith Squadron's shuttle stopped in the Royal Palace's hangar bay, all the Hapans who were there immediately headed to the nearest exit from them. Then, once they were all gone, all the exits were instantly closed off by steel blastdoors. Two seconds later, the upper corners of the hangar began leaking a white spray at a rapid rate.

"Gasoline!" Piggy reported for the rest of the Wraiths. "Once they fill the hangar up with this, I have no doubt they're going to set it on fire somehow and we'll be up in flames before any of us can say, 'Sweet balls of fire!'"

"I'll hold it off from encompassing anymore of the room!" Jesmin announced.

A second after she said that, the gasoline suddenly appeared to stop expanding throughout the rest of the room, but it didn't dissipate; the gas was still being pumped through, but Jesmin's Force shield stopped it from getting anywhere near closer to the shuttle.

"How long can you keep this up, Five?" Piggy asked.

"Only a few minutes, One," Jesmin stated .

"That's all the time we need," Piggy replied as he unbuckled his safety harness, stood up from the pilot seat, and headed out of the cockpit, Wran following along.

In a matter of moments, all of Wraith Squadron, including Jesmin, were off the shuttle and heading for the hangar exit that led to the rest of the Royal Palace. Once they arrived there, Thaymes set to work on the pad installed next to the door at once. Ten seconds passed, and then the door opened up to allow the squad to rush through. Thaymes then closed the door behind them and Jesmin finally allowed her Force shield to drop in the hangar.

"Which way do we go, Three?" Piggy asked Myri as the squad all stopped in the corridor they arrived in.

Myri hurriedly took out her datapad, activated it, and a few seconds later, she looked back up to Piggy. "This way," she pointed to her right.

At once, they all began charging in that direction as Myri continued with, "By now, the Queen Mother and the Chume'da have holed up in their safety bunker, which'll be quite a distance down this way."

For the next several meters, Wraith Squadron ran down the corridor they were in, shooting down all of the cameras installed on the corridor's winding ceiling until they ran headlong before a security patrol consisting of six guards ahead of them.

"Halt!" the lead guard shouted at the squad as she and her subordinates swiftly took out their blasters from their holsters and aimed them at their enemies.

At once, the Alliance squadron broke to either side of the corridor to take cover just as they also brought out their own blasters to bear. Piggy, Scut, Wran, Sharr, and Thaymes took up the left half of the corridor while Myri, Jesmin, Trey, and Turman took up the other side. And just like that, a firefight broke out as they and the opposing team, who also took up positions to either side of the corridor, three guards each, began firing lethal bolts against each other.

The exchange of blasterfire lasted for about fifteen seconds before Wran managed to take out two guards on his side, Piggy took out the last guard, Myri hit one on her side, and Jesmin downed the last two.

"Better luck next time, Two, Six, and Nine," Piggy said to Turman, Scut, and Sharr respectively.

Just as Piggy said that, three more guards appeared from around the corner ahead, and Scut, Turman, and Sharr downed them with single shots to their heads simultaneously.

"Five and I still have a lead on all of you, though," Wran replied.

More footsteps could be heard coming in from behind, and Wran swiftly turned around to shoot the incoming guard straight in the chest.

"Now I'm in the lead," the expert sniper said with a cocky smile.

Then the squad resumed their run for the Queen Mother's bunker.

.

At the same time that Wraith Squadron managed to escape the Palace's hangar bay, Tenel Ka, in her well-lit bunker with Allana, Poik, and two guards who stood at attention near the bunker's exit, said, "The Wraiths are in the Palace now." She then stood up from the couch that she was sitting on with Allana and Poik to head to the exit. "You two," she pointed to the guards, "come with me."

Just as the guards looked at their Queen Mother in askance, Allana asked, "Mother?"

"Milady?" Poik asked almost simultaneously.

Tenel Ka looked back at her. "You two remain here," she said, indicating her daughter along with their chamberlain. "Wraith Squadron has a Force-sensitive among its squad, and a well-trained one at that. They will easily blast their way through the security detail and reach this bunker to try to kill the Chume'da and I."

"But, Your Highness," Poik argued, "if you go out there, you merely increase your chances of succeeding Wraith Squadron's mission!"

"In killing me, there is no doubt about that," the Queen Mother agreed. "But it will significantly lower their chances of reaching the Chume'da."

"And the reason I can't come is because if you don't make it back, I have to become Queen Mother," Allana stated.

"Fact," Tenel Ka said before turning back around to leave the bunker.

"Well, if they kill you, Mother," Allana continued, stopping her remaining parent in her tracks, "there's no guarantee they won't be able to come and kill me after. So I'm coming with you."

The Queen Mother looked back at her own daughter. "Chume'da-"

"I managed to defeat an immortal Sith, who slaughtered practically the entire Jedi Order in one duel, in combat," Allana interrupted. "I think I can take on a few non-Force-sensitives aided by one who may or may not have been a Jedi. And don't tell me this is too dangerous, 'cause this situation is dangerous enough already no matter what way you slice it."

Tenel Ka sighed in defeat. "You will not be changing your mind even if I ordered you?"

"What do you think?" Allana retorted.

"Very well," Tenel Ka stated reluctantly. "You will aid me in this." Then she turned and left with her daughter and their guards.


	15. Chapter 15

The last Hapan guard standing near the intersection that served as the end of the corridor that the Wraiths were in collapsed to the floor with the rest of her dead colleagues. The scorch mark that signified the laser bolt that burned through her face also served as a confirmation that her life was gone forever.

"That's another one for me," Wran said with a cocky smirk. "That puts me three above Five now."

"Shut it, Eight," Jesmin muttered jealously as she and the rest of the squad, including Wran, resumed their pace forward.

With all the guards there, eight in total, now dead on the floor, Wraith Squadron proceeded past the corpses beneath their feet by cautiously stepping past them to reach the turbolift ahead. However, after they were all past the dead bodies, the turbolift suddenly opened up, revealing Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo, her daughter Chume'da Allana Djo Solo, and two Hapan guards, who promptly stepped out of the elevator with resolve and determination on their faces.

The Wraiths stopped in their tracks just as the Hapans before them stopped, mere meters separating them now, and it was quite a while before anyone said or did anything as the two sides squared off.

"So my daughter and I finally get to meet the latest members of the famous Wraith Squadron," Tenel Ka said. "I would say it was a pleasure to meet you, but given the circumstances, I can see that neither of us would agree to that statement."

"I don't suppose you came to surrender, Your Majesty?" Piggy retorted.

"Quite the contrary, Voort saBinring," Tenel Ka replied. "I was actually about to ask whether or not you and your teammates should be doing that."

"Not a chance in any one of the Nine Hells of Corellia, Your Highness," Myri said as she and all of her fellow squad members leveled their blasters up to Tenel Ka.

"Even after your government basically stands no chance against mine, given all of your losses under the Consortium's hand recently?" the Queen Mother inquired.

"The Yuuzhan Vong did a lot worse to the New Republic, it bounced back as the Alliance, and look how that ended," Piggy said.

Tenel Ka scowled. "Speaking of Yuuzhan Vong, it seems as if you have one on your team, for I cannot feel this one's presence in the Force." She nodded her head toward Scut.

"They know, Your Majesty," Scut said. "They've all gotten use to it."

Tenel Ka raised an eyebrow. "If the Galactic Alliance is willing to work with Vong, it seems that there is no hope for the government either way."

"One," Scut said to Piggy, his tone raised in response to what the Queen Mother just said to him, "now?"

Before Piggy could answer, he stopped and looked both at his left and right with the rest of the team, where additional security guards were approaching from either direction.

When the Gamorrean looked back at the Queen Mother, he replied, "No reason to prolong this further anyway. Wraiths, darken your eyes!"

While all the Hapans in the hall looked at the enemy squadron in askance over what Piggy just ordered them to do, the Wraiths themselves quickly covered their eyes with their arms. Around the same time, their Gamorrean leader, who also shielded his eyes with his arm, used his other arm to take out a silver ball from his belt, press a button on it, and throw it down at his feet.

Less than a second later, the ball released a silvery flash that, while to the eyes of humans, Yuuzhan Vong, and Gamorreans, was only mildly irritating, practically blinded the Hapans before them. The flash only lasted for about two seconds, but it was enough to put the Alliance squadron's enemies' eyesights out of commission for a good five minutes. Thanks to the Hapans' intolerance for intense light given that they lived in the Transitory Mists for so long, Wraith Squadron was afforded more than enough time to fulfill their bold mission of regicide.

Wran, Jesmin, and Myri began shooting down the helpless guards to the left; Turman, Scut, and Sharr began taking out the guards to the right; and Piggy, Thaymes, and Trey concentrated their fire toward the Hapan royalty and their own guards.

But just as the lethal laser bolts came flying for them and the security detail of two with them, Tenel Ka and Allana, acting purely on their instincts as dictated through the Force, had their lightsabers out and activated from their belts to deflect the bolts back toward their firers. The three Wraiths who dared to fire on the Queen Mother and her Chume'da, in turn, dove off to either side, Piggy and Trey to the left, and Thaymes to the right.

"Five, I'll take over for you here," Thaymes said to Jesmin. "You take care of the Chume'da."

Jesmin nodded, allowed Thaymes to fulfill her place with Wran and Myri, holstered her blaster, and charged toward Allana with her lightsaber intended to skewer the ten-year-old girl.

Around the same time, Piggy told Scut, "Six, take out the Queen Mother. She won't see you coming."

Like his fellow Wraith who would target the Chume'da, Scut nodded before holstering his weapon, letting Piggy and Trey help out Turman and Sharr down the Hapan guards at the right intersection of this corridor, and unleashed his vibroblade from his sheath. he wasted no more time before bursting toward Tenel Ka, joining Jesmin as they intended to end the Hapan royal bloodline.

Allana managed to catch Jesmin's blade from impaling her through the torso and began dueling off the trained Wraith with the experience she gained from defeating Darth Plagueis, still relying entirely on the Force in this instance. Her mother, meanwhile, appeared to hear the lower hum of a vibroblade swinging toward her, so she leveled her own lightsaber accordingly in the Scut's direction. The disguised Yuuzhan Vong ducked beneath the decapitating swing and tackled the Queen Mother back against the wall.

Meanwhile, after parrying away one of Jesmin's strikes and kicking her back against the wall behind the Wraith, Allana felt her mother's life-force begin fading away from the Yuuzhan Vong's vibroblade in her gut.


	16. Chapter 16

"Mommy!" Allana cried as she felt her beloved mother getting stabbed in the stomach by Scut.

Before she could do anything about what happened to Tenel Ka, however, she also felt Jesmin closing back in on her fast. The Chume'da blocked the Wraiths' lightsaber strike with her own weapon, clashed against it a few more times, and then leaped off to the side where she felt her mother had fallen.

But in the process, for she could not feel Scut's presence through the Force, Allana accidentally body-slammed into the disguised Yuuzhan Vong and the two of them collapsed to the floor. Knowing that she was now on top of a being who was outside the Force, Allana didn't hesitate as she chopped down her lightsaber where she figured the Vong Wraith's head would be.

Her danger sense tingled, and Allana rolled off to one side before Jesmin's lightsaber impaled the area of Scut's body that the Chume'da was just on top of. Allana then swerved her lightsaber to deflect away the strikes that she knew that the remaining Wraiths were now firing on her from the other side. She could only block a few more strikes, however, as Jesmin was rushing in from behind again.

So the Chume'da pushed herself off the ground and into the air, where she executed a backward flip while simultaneously striking down at where she guessed that Jesmin's head would be. The Force-sensitive Wraith blocked the strike, and spun around to face Allana again, forcing her back toward her downed mother. It wasn't long before the Chume'da tripped back against Tenel Ka's dying body, but before Jesmin could execute a strike that would have ended the Hapan royal bloodline, Allana kicked out against the Wraith's left kneecap.

Jesmin grunted in pain as she dropped to her other leg, and it was that temporary distraction that allowed Allana to skewer her through the chest with her lightsaber.

"Jezzie!" Myri's voice called out.

By now, Allana's vision was coming back around, and she could see that the light in the eyes of the Wraith before her had gone out. She could also see Scut's decapitated body - his neoglith masquer having already slithered off his body in two pieces - along with the shocked Wraiths who still lived, and who had successfully gunned down all the other Hapan guards in the corridor and its intersections.

Among these sights, Allana ignored Tenel Ka's pained moans from the stab wound that she had just suffered, as it would only serve as a distraction to the enemies who she still had to face here.

After Allana sliced her blade up through Jesmin's corpse so that it came out through her left shoulder, Myri screamed, "You little bitch!" Then she and the rest of the Wraiths fired their blasters at her.

In response, Allana automatically raised a Force shield against the Alliance squadron, and the lethal laser bolts dissipated harmlessly against the shield. The Chume'da then pushed that shield outward and slammed it into Wraith Squadron, carrying them backwards several feet.

Leaping off of her mother and to her feet, Allana rushed toward the downed Wraiths. They, in turn, resumed firing their blasters for her while still on the floor, which she easily deflected back toward them. Most of them - Myri, Trey, Sharr, Piggy, and Wran - managed to roll out of the way of the reflected bolts, while the last two - Turman and Thaymes - were hit square in their foreheads, killing them instantly.

The first Wraith to get up and charge Allana was Myri, who, after hurriedly holstering her blaster, roared with righteous fury for the death of her childhood friend as she prepared to strike the Chume'da with a vibroblade. Of course, that blade was easily knocked out of Myri's hand by Allana's superior lightsaber blade, but it didn't stop Myri from launching a stomp-kick straight in the child's face that sent her sprawling back to the floor.

Myri then whipped out her blaster again and aimed it Allana. But before she could fire, the Chume'da threw her lightsaber forward, and it sliced through the enraged Wraith's blaster-wielding hand before spinning back around so that its pommel hit Allana's grip again. Myri then dropped to the floor on her knees, screaming in pain this time, and Allana saw fit to leap back to her feet and put the Wraith out of her misery by rushing forward and decapitating her.

However, Allana then dropped prone to the floor in pain when an expertly-placed shot hit her in her right kneecap. The firer of that shot, Wran, who was back on his feet with the remaining Wraiths, rang off another shot for the downed Chume'da's head, but Allana blocked off that shot and sent it back toward the dark-skinned Wraith's blaster.

The gun was abruptly shot out of Wran's hand, and he wielded the wrist that held the gun in pain.

"Well, shooting her won't work," Sharr remarked.

But before any of the Wraiths could come up with any solutions to assassinate the Chume'da now, the sound of a laser bolt being fired rang out and Wran dropped straight to the floor, a singed hole in the back of his head.

His surviving Wraiths turned around and saw a lone Hapan guard rounding the corner ahead, and she was then joined by three colleagues. They then fired out a stream of bolts for the Wraiths who still lived, and those Alliance soldiers dropped back to either side of the corridor, each taking cover behind a column that separated the corridor at various intervals. Piggy and Trey took the left section, and Sharr took the right one. Soon, another firefight broke out thanks to what remained of Wraith Squadron as their Hapan opponents also dropped off to either side of the corridor to take up cover behind the columns on their own side.

With their concentration on the guards distracting them, however, none of the three surviving Wraiths could react to the flying form of the Chume'da, who propelled herself from the ground toward Trey, who was hiding behind Piggy. Allana bisected the good-looking human down the middle, and the mere sound of a lightsaber behind him prompted Piggy to swiftly spin around and aim his blaster for Allana.

But the Chume'da kicked the blaster out of the Gamorrean's hand and it went sailing for Sharr, who, by then, had also noticed Allana killing Trey and had fired a shot for her. The laser was intercepted by the arc of Piggy's lost blaster, which only caused a minor explosion that didn't stop Allana from impaling Piggy through his enormous belly. Meanwhile, distracted by the blaster explosion, though, Sharr lost his blaster by a shot fired by one of the Hapan guards still taking cover.

"Hold your fire!" Allana called to the guards, her lightsaber still skewering the Gamorrean Wraith leader.

At once, the guards complied, and Allana, slicing her blade through the left side of Piggy's gut, turned to Sharr and leaped toward him, leveling her lightsaber beneath his chin.

"Do you surrender?" Allana asked.

"Surrender?!" Sharr shouted. "After what you just did to Piggy and the rest of this team? Not a chance, you brat!"

The sole surviving Wraith then took out a silver ball, which Allana instantly recognized as a thermal detonator, so she then impaled Sharr right through the neck. The detonator dropped to the ground, still unarmed, and Allana deactivated her lightsaber right there, allowing the last Wraith to slump down against the wall behind him, dead.

Looking back to the end of the corridor, Allana saw her mother still writing against the wall behind her in agony, the wound in her stomach leaking out blood.

"We must get my mother to the Palace's medcenter immediately!" Allana ordered the guards as she ran toward Tenel Ka.

Those guards, without hesitation, followed quickly in the Chume'da's wake.


	17. Chapter 17

For the past two days on Chandrila, Jaden had been hiding beneath the decrepit ruins of an abandoned apartment complex several blocks away from Jeila Humda's beach resort. In attempting to fulfill his mission of at least contacting the former Jedi apprentices on this planet, he reached out through the Force, masterfully disguising his aura so that Humda wouldn't be able to get a lock on him, to privately commune with those ex-apprentices.

There were about a dozen gathered across Chandrila, and Jaden was able to contact them all through the Force without ever getting caught by Humda. Two of those former apprentices, human male Geuy Gagner and female human Vierra Falan, were about two cities away, and because their families had disowned them, they were now living as homeless people on the streets; obviously, they had nothing to lose in rejoining the Jedi Order under one man.

Jaden promised them that he would come for them, as soon as the manhunt that Humda no doubt placed on him died down. As for the rest of the former apprentices on the planet, Jaden could feel their reluctance in rejoining him, but they all promised that they would at least think about it, which was a hopeful sign for the Grand Master.

For himself, Jaden only ever came out into daylight to forage and covertly steal for food and water, and even then, he made sure to be careful not to pick up any suspicious looks or attract any attention from the authorities.

Of course, not all things could go according to plan.

Walking down the sidewalk back toward his rundown home, Jaden, having stolen a piece of fruit now in his pocket, never sensed Jeila Humda, joined by two police officers, appearing ahead of him from around the corner of a building to his right. The former Jedi had a white bacta patch wrapped around her head, a testament to the impact she suffered when Jaden used the Force to send all that debris against her two days earlier.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Master Korr," Humda intoned.

Jaden sensed the two officers who were sneaking up behind him, preventing an escape that involved turning around and sprinting like hell.

"Which way involves me simply walking away from this?" Jaden retorted.

Just as Humda snorted in derision at the Grand Master's remark, the latter sensed that the cops behind him decided to take the opportunity to tackle him to the ground. So he leaped up and back-flipped over them, bashing their heads together so that they collapsed to the ground unconscious.

Upon landing, Jaden saw the cops with Humda whip out their blasters from their holsters and aim them at him. But before either of the first two lethal laser bolts could scorch him, the Grand Master already had Humda's blue-bladed lightsaber out and ready, deflecting the shots back toward their sources. The lasers promptly knocked the blasters out of those officers' hands, leaving Humda to roll her eyes in annoyance before the pommel of a lightsaber dropped from her right sleeve and into her hand.

A yellow blade was ignited from the handle and then the ex-Jedi launched herself through the air toward Jaden. When she landed before him, the Grand Master caught Humda's strike with the lightsaber that he took from her, and their duel began. The cops behind Humda, meanwhile, only watched, not wanting to get in the way of something that would surely kill them, at least on accident, if they got involved.

While Jaden was the more experienced and skillful between the two of them, Humda was definitely no slouch as she fought; it seemed, after all these years, that she was keeping up with her swordsmanship since she ran away from Yoda's Order, Jaden thought. Had she decided to rejoin the Order under Luke Skywalker's leadership, she could have been a really skilled and powerful Master worthy of being on the Council. Such a shame that she had no interest in being part of the Jedi again.

Of course, it was no wonder as to why she didn't want to rejoin the Order, her ethical problems with them notwithstanding; her anger and hatred for Jaden, simply on the principle that he was a Jedi, was Humda's sole source of will that she summoned against the Grand Master. Her attacks were quick and vicious, and Jaden was doing all that he could to keep up from ending up in more than one piece by her blade. Yet, even with the challenge of fighting for his own life, the Grand Master never lost his ground, was never driven back, even if he couldn't drive Humda back either, and even allowed himself the thought of how truly difficult this woman would be as an opponent if she were a well-trained Sith.

Hell, not even a well-trained one; she could have been taught by Darth Caedus, and she'd still be more powerful than that pathetic excuse of a tyrant.

Roughly half a minute of dueling had passed since it began, and Jaden was able to briefly halt the fight by locking their blades together on the sidewalk, scorching the ground at their feet.

"I see you have my lightsaber, just as I yours," Jaden pointed out. "Want to switch?"

"And give you the opportunity to have both lightsabers, Master Korr?" Humda countered. "I don't think so."

She then broke out of the lock and the duel resumed at an even faster pace than before, with Humda's strikes more determined and dead-set on ending Jaden's life. The Grand Master struggled further to counter the surprising onslaught of attacks, and it wasn't long - roughly fifteen seconds - before he was actually driven back a couple of steps.

It was then Humda who paused the duel and smiled deviously at the rapidly-breathing Jaden before her. "Master Korr, you disappoint me," she said mockingly. "Skywalker must have held you in such high esteem."

They traded a few more strikes, and Humda drew them to a halt again with her own lock between their blades. "Surely, you can do better," she said, her arrogant smirk never fading from her face.

Jaden disengaged from the lock and this time, it was he who who took on the offensive against Humda. She was forced back a few paces, parried away one of her opponent's strokes, and then back-flipped away several feet.

"This whole thing is pointless, Humda," Jaden called. "If you don't want to have anything to do with the Order, then give me back my lightsaber, and we can part ways right now!"

"I won't allow that, Korr," Humda countered. "The Jedi will only fall into corruption under your hand, just as it did under Yoda's." She then sprinted back for Jaden.

Humda forced Jaden back further back along the sidewalk until the two of them were dueling on the empty road. There, Jaden finally managed to plant his feet in the middle of the street as he parried off Humda's lethal strokes.

Neither of them halted the duel as an unidentified shuttle seemed to drop out of the sky right next to them and open up its landing ramp from above the dueling Force-sensitives. That caused Jaden to be surprised when he was caught in a Force-grip and yanked up toward the open ramp.

Once the Grand Master' buttocks slammed on the top of the ramp, he saw Humda having made a Force-enhanced leap toward him. Jaden then noticed a young male Chagrian - roughly in his early twenties - standing next to him, who then reached out a hand toward Humda and sent a Force wave back for her.

And just as she began falling back down, the Chagrian used the Force again to yank Jaden's lightsaber out of the elder woman's hand and have it end up smacking in his palm. He then leveled the now-deactivated pommel down at Jaden.

"I believe this is yours, Grand Master Korr?" the Chagrian retorted, still holding out the lightsaber.

Jaden raised an eyebrow in curiosity as he retook his weapon. "Peb Liko?" he asked.

The Chagrian nodded and then bowed. "At your service," he said before helping Jaden up to his feet.

The two of them then looked back toward the ground, and saw Humda land on the ground in a crouch. She looked back up at the shuttle in anger just as the four police officers with her - the two that Jaden managed to knock out had woken up, apparently - aimed their blasters up at the shuttle.

But before any of them could fire a laser bolt, the shuttle's ramp was already closing. Two seconds later, the bolts that those cops did fire dissipated harmlessly against the shuttle's shields before it turned and flew away, off toward another of Chandrila's cities.

"Thank you for saving me back there, Peb," Jaden said to the Chagrian as they walked to the shuttle's passenger cabin. "As well as my lightsaber." He indicated the weapon hooked on his belt.

"You're very welcome, Master Korr," Peb replied as the two of them took their seats in the otherwise empty cabin.

"So have you decided to accept my offer to return to the Order?" Jaden asked.

"I have," Peb said with a pleasant smile. "And I will help you convince the others to do so, too."


	18. Chapter 18

Sitting in a chair out in the waiting room of the Royal Palace's medcenter, a cast wrapped around the leg that suffered from the blaster shot courtesy of the late Wran Narcassan, Allana's face, directed at the medcenter's entrance, was drawn in a frown.

How could this be happening? she wondered. How could it be leading up to this... again?

The Palace's doctors and nurses were among the finest that the Consortium had to offer. And the Palace's medical facilities were the finest that the Consortium had to offer. And Allana knew - she _knew_, as she could sense from the worried and stressed presences of those medical experts in there - that they were doing everything in their power to save her mother, the Consortium's Queen Mother.

And yet, even though it was a simple wound from a vibroblade, and even though Allana had already donated the pints of blood necessary to replenish what the Queen Mother had lost from that wound, Tenel Ka was still dying.

How could this be happening? Allana repeated in her mind.

She had already lost her mother once, she wouldn't lose her again. So Allana closed her eyes and began to pour all of her strength into her mother through the Force, reaching out to her from beyond the doors that led into the medcenter.

_Mommy_, Allana said. _I'm here to help you. Please don't leave me again_. Tears began to stream the Chume'da's eyes in the physical world.

_Allana_, Tenel Ka's voice came back. Even via telepathic means, she sounded weak. _It... it is too late._

_No!_ Allana argued. _I won't let you die again!_

_Promise... promise me that you will lead the galaxy to a better tomorrow, child_.

_But I'm not ready yet! I still need you! I need you as my guide, I need you as my teacher, I need you as my mother!_

_For a long time, I thought the same thing, child. But now, the Force calls to me. It tells me that you are ready to inherit the throne, just as I was when my mother passed away. In spite of what your own doubts tell you, Allana, you are ready. And though I will be gone from this world, I will always be there for you in the Force_.

_Mommy!_

_Goodbye, Allana_.

"No!" Allana cried aloud.

And then, like a drop of water sending ripples through an entire tranquil pond, Tenel Ka's death ripped through Allana's very being, just as it had when her mother last died.

The green-gowned surgeon who stepped out of the medcenter was not surprised to see the crying little redheaded girl staring back at her with a mixture of anger and grief.

"I'm sorry, Chume'da," the surgeon reported. She didn't have to report that the girl's mother, the Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium, was no longer among the living; even if the Chume'da wasn't Force-sensitive, just those first two words would have been enough to communicate what just happened.

Then Allana's vision blurred until all around her was white. Her grief for her mother now mixed with confusion, she was standing upright, on both legs, neither of which had a cast, as she did a full one-eighty around.

When she came back to where she started - at least where she _thought_ she started, given the emptiness about - she saw an all-too familiar, dark-robed Muun standing a few meters from her with a neutral expression on his face.

The one who had claimed to be the Bringer of Tranquility, but was as great a harbinger of doom as the entity Abeloth ever was.

"Darth Plagueis," Allana spat with vehement hatred. "I thought I banished you to that Yuuzhan Vong-filled reality."

"Hello, Allana," Plagueis responded in a level voice, maintaining his unreadable expression all the while. "And you did. But I can still communicate to you, even with realities separating us. The Force is such a powerful thing, as I'm sure you already know. But anyway, I see that you have lost your mother again, have you not?"

Allana hesitated, allowing her brows to crease with hope as she looked back at the Sith Lord. But then she resumed her distasteful look against the Muun. "Don't even think about it, Plagueis," she growled, hastily backing away from him through the void in which they stood. "Even if it means bringing her back from the dead again, I won't allow you to take control of my mother again."

"Whoever said about bringing her back again?" Plagueis retorted.

Allana looked back at him in askance. "What?"

"Your love for your mother runs strong, child," Plagueis said as Tenel Ka's form suddenly manifested between him and Allana. The deceased Queen Mother, whose eyes were shut, appeared to be floating with her body positioned horizontally in the air, as if she were laying in an invisible bed. "Does it not?"

"Mommy!" Allana cried as she looked her over with obvious concern.

"So it does," Plagueis muttered to himself with a hint of satisfaction.

Allana promptly looked back up to Plagueis with her acidic stare. "What have you done, Plagueis?"

The Sith smirked. "I killed your mother, child, by convincing her that she was no longer needed. Even after you broke my influence over her, I was still able to maintain a connection with her, a one-way one, in which I could sense her; again, realities aren't much of a hindrance to the Force. And it wasn't so much as the easily-treatable wound that killed her so much as it was persuasion through the Force that she had no other choice. And now I own her soul in the Force; she is mine to do with as I please."

"What?! You monster!"

Allana then leaped over her mother's unmoving spirit to tackle Plagueis back through the all-consuming void. Unfortunately for her, he seemed to dissipate into nothingness before she seemed to fall for what felt like an eternity. But when her feet were positioned against the white below her again, she turned back and saw Plagueis on the opposite side now, his devilish smirk now a villainous grin accompanied by a sadistic laugh.

"You may have defeated me, child, in the physical world, as my power was unable to conquer yours," Plagueis told her when he stopped laughing. "But here, when I can contact you in your mind, you have no power. So, if you will be so kind as to cooperate, I promise you that I will release your mother's spirit. Otherwise..." He deliberately trailed off before placing a hand on top of Tenel Ka's head.

In an instant, her eyes shot open and she screamed in agonizing pain in response to the Force reverberations that Plagueis was sending her.

"No!" Allana cried. "Stop it!"

Plagueis obliged, but still, he maintained his in-control smile. "As you wish," he mocked.

"How can I be sure that you will release my mother if I do as you say?" Allana asked.

"To maintain a stable alliance," Plagueis said, "one must honor their word."

"That's still no guarantee that you will honor your word," Allana countered.

Plagueis smirked. "Very bright, you are. But as I said, you have no power here. Which means you don't have any choice but to trust me, even if I am lying."

Allana grimaced. "What do you want?"

When Plagueis was done explaining what he wanted Allana to do, the white background around her disappeared and she was back in reality, on a comfortable bed in the medcenter with a male nurse looking her form over.

"Chume'da!" the nurse stated in surprise. "You're awake!"

"Yes, I am," Allana said as she sat up in the bed. "Awake, that is. But Chume'da, that's no longer my title. You may now refer to me as Queen Mother, as all others will."


	19. Chapter 19

Peb Liko's personal transport shuttle lowered through the opening entrance of his penthouse to park inside the hangar bay. After the engines shut off, the opening above closed off from the Chandrilan skies.

"Excellent flying as always, Buage," said Peb, who had stood up from his seat with Jaden, to the male Aqualish who stepped from the shuttle's cockpit to enter the passenger cabin. "As promised, you'll get that bonus at the end of the month for what you just did for Grand Master Korr here."

The Aqualish, Buage, nodded at his employer before looking at Jaden. "You're lucky my boss was one of you, Jedi," Buage intoned. "Or else I'd've-"

"Continue running your mouth like that, Buage, and that bonus will be cut off," Peb interrupted.

The Aqualish sighed and nodded again. "Yes, boss. I'll shut it."

Without anymore words exchanged between any of them, Buage followed Peb and Jaden to the back of the passenger cabin to leave the shuttle.

"So, since the police know what you just did for me, Peb," Jaden said after the three of them left the shuttle down the boarding ramp, "isn't coming back to your penthouse a bad idea?"

"Not when I have the entire Chandrila Security Force in my pocket, Master Korr," Peb answered. "Jeila Humda may be quite influential on this planet, but to compare our individual wealth, let's just say that she's the minimum wage part-timer to my full-time manager at your local grocery store."

Jaden raised an eyebrow. "As long as I'm with you, I'm pretty much untouchable even to Humda," he concluded.

"You got it," Peb nodded.

"Well, looks like my luck's finally turning around," Jaden commented. "Anyway, you don't mind if I use your influence to find those former Jedi apprentices and at least try to convince them to return to the Order, do you, Peb?" The question was obviously rhetorical, given the way that Peb was aiding Jaden so far.

"Already ahead of you there, Master Korr," Peb replied as they and Buage left the hangar bay to travel down a pristine, silvery corridor. "I instructed a few personal agents of mine to go out through the various cities on this world to contact those former Jedi in their homes."

"Well, what about Geuy Gagner and Vierra Falan?" Jaden asked. "They're homeless now."

"Thought of that, too," Peb said. "I managed to get a lock on their locations, in a broad sense... Which cities they're in, anyway, through the Force. I already have a couple agents who are on the lookout for them."

By now, Buage had departed from the Grand Master and the former apprentice as he had opened a door into a room off to the left. He stepped in and closed it behind him.

Jaden glanced back to where the Aqualish disappeared, and looked back to Peb. "That where he stays?"

"Yep," Peb answered.

"What's his problem with the Jedi?" Jaden asked.

"Buage hasn't told me about what he has against the Jedi," Peb told the Grand Master. "And I didn't try to read him through the Force, as I felt it would have been an invasion of his privacy. I don't worry too much about it, though; Buage is unquestionably loyal to me, so long as the credits keep flowing."

"Well, quite frankly, I'm not too fond of Buage's kind either," Jaden said.

"You have something against Aqualish, Master Korr?" Peb asked, shocked at the unintended implication that his Master may be a xenophobe in an Order that promoted acceptance of others, regardless of their differences - so long as they didn't join the dark side or become criminals.

"Oh, no, obviously not," Jaden quickly corrected himself. "I meant people who sacrifice living by their principles for money. I can tell that Buage doesn't like working for you, given the fact that you're Force-sensitive, Peb."

"Not a whole lot of employees like their bosses anyway," Peb countered idly. "And not everyone can afford to live lifestyles where they can live on their principles. Buage certainly wasn't brought up that way; it's one of the few things he's told me about himself."

"I understand that," Jaden said as he and Peb stopped at a door, which the Chagrian unlocked and allowed the Grand Master to step through. "Still, I don't feel comfortable living around someone who could betray you if the credits were good enough. Otherwise, Buage is no better than a bounty hunter; and a Mando one, at that."

"I heard that the Mandalorians have a few good codes of their own, Master Korr," Peb said as he joined Jaden in his luxurious apartment. "But I get where you're coming from, all the same."

Jaden then stopped in the middle of the apartment to get a good measure of his surroundings. Ahead was a large viewport that showed the brilliantly sunny Chandrilan skies, and all around inside the apartment itself, several pieces of plush, stuffed furniture practically littered the living room over a fine, widespread polyester carpet. To several sides led to relatively small corridors that no doubt led to the bedrooms, the refreshers, etc.

"I see you appreciate my decor, Master," Peb said with a prideful tone.

Jaden smirked playfully as he looked back at the Chagrian. "If any of the other Masters were alive, Peb," he said, his tone still rather jolly, "you'd have failed to gain the rank of Knight just by virtue of not adhering to the word, 'Humble.'"

Peb shrugged, mirroring Jaden's smirk. "I guess I'll just have to relearn that when I and the other former apprentices rejoin the Order, eh, Master Korr?"

"Probably have to start from scratch with your training," Jaden bantered as he resumed his view of the luxurious apartment.

"Well, not exactly from scratch," Peb said as he swiftly whipped out and activated his lightsaber. "I've kept up my sparring practices, just for their own sake. Wanna gauge me, Master?"

"Gladly, Apprentice Liko," Jaden said as he also whipped out and ignited his own saber.


	20. Chapter 20

Now properly robed as the Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium, Allana Djo Solo stepped into her throne room, trailed by her political adviser, Ulik Quraq, and the ever-timid Poik. While the latter stopped at the nearby table topped by commlinks, the former followed her new leader up the steps leading to her prestigious throne, where Allana elegantly sat herself down in. She then waved Poik to activate all the comms. The chamberlain nodded and activated each of them in turn until all six comms projected the holographic-projected heads of the military leaders that the latest Queen Mother had called for.

From left to right were Admiral Lenk Joon, General Heqan Booja, Colonel Mann Nion, and Commanders Giggag, Illok, and Gebbam. The neutral expressions they gave from afar, in other sections of the Transitory Mists, belayed whatever doubts they had in the leadership skills that this ten-year-old girl had to offer. It would have been more likely that they would have listened to Ulik Quraq as the unofficial puppet leader, but even if these military commanders thought that, Allana would have made sure to impress upon them that she was leading the Consortium, not Quraq. She would stay in her place, offering suggestions and helpful comments, but no more.

"Greetings, my august military leaders," Allana opened up. "I have called this meeting to organize our next move against the Galactic Alliance. As I am obviously under-qualified to dictate what specific actions must be taken, I am ready to hear what any and all of you have to come up with as the next strike against the enemy."

For the next hour and a half, the Queen Mother allowed Joon, Booja, Nion, and the other three commanders discuss what needed to be done against the Galactic Alliance. One would be impressed by the way that the ten-year-old matriarch was handling matters like the responsible adult that her mother once was, as if she were an adult trapped in a little girl's body. The only times she ever spoke or otherwise committed anything to the discussion were simple questions and nods of affirmation to let the military leaders know that she understood what they were saying.

By the end of the lengthy conversation, Allana announced, "I believe that the time for the Alliance to be wiped out has come. But I am convinced by your argument, Admiral Joon, that the Imperial Remnant and even the Confederation are still considerable forces to be reckoned with; it is not inconceivable that either of them would attempt to strike against us after our forces are weakened by war. Therefore, that is why I propose that, at the same time as we strike out against and finish off the Alliance once and for all, we take advantage of the distraction that the downfall of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances would offer for the majority of the galaxy. And with that advantage, we will repeat our tactic of sending in spies to sabotage their government and military."

"But, Your Majesty," General Booja said, "repeating that strategy against the more military-minded organizations of the Remnant and the Confederation will not work."

"How so, General?" Allana asked.

"Well, given how effective it was against the Alliance," Booja began, "I have no doubt that the likes of Vitor Reige and Turr Phennir will be on the lookout for that again. In fact, especially in light of the recent assassination attempt on your life by the Alliance, Your Highness, I have already posted various squads of commandos throughout the Consortium, as well, as in the Royal Palace, to make sure that no Remnant, Confederation, or even Alliance spies can target you again, as I'm sure any of those governments are even considering at this point."

"A fair consideration, General Booja," Commander Gebbam said. "And if sabotage against the Imperial Remnant and the Confederation were to fail during our endgame operation against the Galactic Alliance - for they could be captured and/or killed and have their covers blown in the process - we would prompt a multi-front war against them. And that would be bad enough regardless of whether or not we will be successful in wiping out the Alliance with minimal losses, at best, on our side before our Battle Dragons even engage Imperial or Confederation Star Destroyers."

"And, again, as General Booja pointed out," Admiral Joon interjected, "it is not inconceivable to at least figure that either the Remnant or the Confederation, or both even, have already inserted spies into our own government to attempt to end the monarchy once and for all. I would think it would be in your best interest to dedicate military resources in rooting out such would-be assassins, Your Highness."

Allana stifled a frustrated sigh from escaping her lips. Only a little more than an hour and a half, and she was already being questioned by those who were beneath her on the Hapan hierarchy. Granted, of course, she was only a ten-year-old girl who didn't know all that much compared to these skilled and accomplished war veterans who spoke to her from vast distances across space and time. But still, she needed to reign in what authority she could, but without making herself seem like nothing more than a rich, spoiled, and petty child who only wanted her subordinates to follow her every whim, even if those whims led to the downfall of Hapan civilization throughout the Transitory Mists.

"If not sabotage, ladies," Allana finally said after a while of collecting herself to speak again, "what suggestions do any of you offer to neutralize the Imperial Remnant and Confederation as our enemies?"

"I suggest peace treaties for the Remnant and the Confederation," Colonel Nion offered. "While the Alliance has made clear under Chief Rodan's regime that they won't surrender even in the face of certain doom, we have no reason to be at war with either the Imperial Remnant or Confederation anyway. Resolving any tension between us before it even starts will do nothing but benefit the Consortium overall as we take the territory that had once belonged to the Alliance."

The other military leaders agreed with Nion's words.

Allana, meanwhile, sat back in her throne and steepled her fingers in contemplation as she thought whether or not it was wise to follow the colonel's suggestion. She looked to Quraq, who nodded, and the holographic-projected leaders looked back at their young leader with hopefulness in their eyes when she returned her gaze to them.

"The Remnant and Confederation are made up of traitors and backstabbing lechers who would sell out their own mothers for a chance in political and military escalation," Allana said. _But then, so is this Consortium_, she thought. Saying that would be morally degrading to all else who either spoke to her or were in the room with her. "We must tread carefully if we are to sign successful treaties with them."

"Rest assured, Milady," Joon said with a smile, "we always tread carefully when we sign treaties with potential enemies."

Sometime later, the discussion had ended with all in agreement.


	21. Chapter 21

Retiring to her bedchamber, Allana wasn't surprised to see Plagueis sitting on her couch with that arrogant smirk on his face.

The Queen Mother snorted as she crossed her arms. "How long can you maintain that astral form across different realities?"

"As long as I need to," Plagueis answered. "When you're immortal, virtually nothing can exhaust you or your abilities. But anyway, I was monitoring your first session as Queen Mother with those military leaders. I must say, I am genuinely impressed, especially for a girl your age."

His tone then degraded to something a bit more feral. "Except that you forgot to do what I told you to do, Your Highness." He spoke her title like a curse just as the form of the previous Queen Mother appeared between them.

Abruptly, he placed a hand on the spirit of Tenel Ka's forehead and emitted another painful Force wave that startled her to scream in agony again. In response, Allana vainly sent out a Force wave against Plagueis's astral form that didn't even waver it from torturing her mother's ghost.

Five seconds after Allana sent out that wave, Plagueis stopped torturing Tenel Ka and looked back up to her daughter.

"Well?" he asked. "Are you going to remedy your mistake, Your Majesty, or do I have to continue torturing your beloved predecessor?"

Allana sighed before taking out her commlink and activating it. "Coordinator Eru?"

"Yes, Your Majesty?" came the female voice on the other end.

"I need you to assign two dozen collector agents each to the following worlds..."

.

Geuy Gagner and Vierra Falan, both in ragged, dirty clothing, were the first two former Jedi apprentices to enter Peb's apartment to find him and Jaden standing by in the center f the living room, waiting for their arrival.

"Welcome to my humble abode, Mr. Gagner, Madame Falan," Peb said as he swept his arm to wave around the luxurious area around them. "Please help yourselves to whatever nourishment you find necessary for yourselves."

"Don't mind if we do," Geuy said as he raced for the kitchen.

"I've literally been dying for a good meal today," Vierra said.

"You think they'll sack your kitchen empty?" Jaden asked Peb.

"They can try," Peb answered with a wan smile.

Several more minutes went by, and one by one, each of the nine other former apprentices across Chandrila entered Peb's apartment. Their Chagrian host directed them towards the sofas, where they had room to disperse, and once all were seated, including Peb and Jaden themselves, the former told the others, "Now we just have to wait for our last two guests, ladies and gentlemen."

"How much longer do you think Geuy and Vierra will be, Peb?" Jaden asked.

"Well, it's not the first time I took homeless people off the street, Master Korr, so I'll give them about five more minutes or so," Peb replied.

"You allowed vagrants into your home before this, Peb?" asked the Zabrak male, Macra, who had only been an apprentice in the Order for a good six months before the Gerila Shesh-led Galactic Alliance's move against Shedu Maad.

Peb shrugged. "Yeah, sure. When I'm in a generous mood. It's usually because they're within my general area, Macra, typically just outside my penthouse. I got the resources to spare to feed and clean 'em, so what the hell. I help 'em out."

"Then you just send them back on the street and on their directionless way?" asked the Chevin female Piollak Jendel, who had been part of the Order for eight months before it was rounded up from Shedu Maad.

"Well, I set most of 'em up with jobs, Piollak," Peb said. "Nothing cushy or high-paid though. Just enough to get them by living in modest apartments in the city, at least."

"Seems as if being in the Jedi Order has changed you for the better, my friend," the soft-spoken Twi'lek male Hemad Gade said. He'd been part of the Order for almost a year before he was kicked out by Grand Master Hamner; again, because of the Alliance move on Shedu Maad ordered by Chief of State Shesh. "I doubt that you would be so generous if not for your time being trained by Master Durron."

Peb's face fell into a frown at the mention of Kyp Durron. The Chagrian had trained under the once-Sith-possessed Jedi Master prior to the Battle of Reonoq which sparked the Second Swarm War, and which ended the lives of several Jedi Masters, which included Kyp.

"Yeah," Peb said, his tone sullen now. "He knew just how to kick my ass. Not only in the literal sense, mind you, but also in the figurative sense. He knocked the rich snobbiness I was so well known for when I first entered the Order."

[I still remember how much of a massive prick you were], roared the female Wookiee Yellacaba. She had been part of the Order for almost two years, and was known to be a very slow learner as an apprentice. Trained by Octa Ramis, she would often get on the Jedi Master's nerves in her general incompetence with a lightsaber, never mind her constant failure of heeding to basic meditations. If it weren't for her will to strive to be a Jedi Knight, she would have dropped out out of the Order on her own.

"Yeah," agreed Qana Hasa, the male Caamasi who had only been in the Order for two months before being exiled by Grand Master Hamner. "You were quite intolerable in your self-righteous sense of higher placement among the older apprentices, like us."

"Well, again, thanks to Master Durron, whatever was left of that assholery my parents instilled in me by spoiling me so much, I think it's safe to say it's gone," Peb said.

"I sure hope so," replied the female Anx Areena Ajag. She was part of the Order for only four months. "I never did appreciate you calling me hornhead so many times. You were lucky I didn't report you for xenophobia, Liko."

"Yeah, sorry about that, Areena," Peb told her with genuine apology in his tone. "I was definitely an idiot before Master Durron took me on."

"Indeed, you were, Liko," male Bothan Krei'lap said. Part of the Order for five months. "You still owe me an apology for calling me Snout-Face."

"Sorry, Krei," Peb told him. His tone was still sincere.

"Well, you weren't all that bad to me, Peb, so don't be so hard on yourself," purred the sultry voice of female Zeltron Ceraz Polin. Having been in the Order for a good seven months, she was one of the few apprentices to take a liking to her Chagrian host back when they were all apprentices; the two of them often flirted with one another, but nothing really serious ever happened.

Peb only smiled in response to the sexy Zeltron. "The old me would have made a rather perverse comment on that one, Ceraz."

"Would it have been, 'I can be hard on you, baby?'" asked male Iktotchi Jeg Juh, apprentice of only three months in the Order in the events leading up to the Alliance taking the majority of the Jedi back to Coruscant.

"Telepathy, Jeg?" Peb asked with a wry smile.

"No, I just knew the old you so well," Jeg replied.

Ceraz couldn't help but look away from Peb at what Jeg had said.

By then, Geuy and Vierra had stepped out of the kitchen area and slowly walked over to the couch, clutching their bellies.

"So... much... food," Geuy said.

"If I throw up, I'll never forgive myself," Vierra followed.

"Even if you do, the clean-up will be no problem," Peb said. "Now, take a load off, you two. I don't mind any of my couches getting dirty from your attire."

Once Geuy and Vierra sat down, Jaden stood up and said, "All right, everyone, listen up. I'm reforming the Jedi Order, and this is how we'll do it..."


	22. Chapter 22

In response to the knock on his door, retired Confederation Admiral Wedge Antilles walked over and opened the door of his modest apartment - as modest as retired General could live, anyway. There, he found the sullen-faced figures of fellow New Republic starfighter veterans Kell and Tyria Sarkin Tainer standing outside.

"Kell, Tyria, what are you guys doing here?" Wedge asked. "Why didn't you comm me or any of the ladies first?" It was only then that he took into account their dour expressions after neither of them answered. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"Are Iella and Syal home, Wedge?" Kell asked.

"Yeah, sure, they are," Wedge answered nervously. "Why? What is it?"

"Do you mind if we come in, Wedge?" Tyria asked.

"No, of course not," he replied before waving them in. "Come on in." After the Tainers entered the apartment, their host followed along and showed them to the living room couches. "Would you like to sit?" Kell and Tyria nodded, and they took their seats on the couch.

"Could you please get Iella and Syal, Wedge?" Kell asked. "They need to hear this as much as you do."

"Uh... okay," Wedge replied, now more worried than ever. He turned and called out, "Iella! Syal! Kell and Tyria are here, and they have something they need to tell us!"

"Coming," the two women's voices came back simultaneously.

Ten seconds later, Iella and Syal appeared in the living room, unsurprised to find the Tainers with Wedge.

"Can you please all sit down?" Kell asked the Antilles family.

All three of the Antilles clan present nodded hesitantly before they sat down on the couch opposing the one in which Kell and Tyria both sat in.

"Kell, Tyria, what's going on?" Iella asked.

A moment of disturbing silence passed between the two families before Tyria's voice came out in a quivering waver. "Jesmin died. I felt it through the Force." She looked like she was on the verge of tears now.

"Emperor's black bones, I'm sorry to hear that, the both of you," Iella said with genuine grief.

"But that's not all," Kell said. "We wouldn't have told you right away like this if it were just Jesmin."

"What do you mean?" Wedge asked.

"Do you remember those times that I babysat Myri, Wedge?" Tyria asked.

"Yes," Wedge replied, his fear of the worst bubbling up to the surface. From the periphery of his vision, he could also see Iella and Syal's expressions also turning grave. "What about those times, Tyria?"

"I formed a connection with her that extended my Force-awareness to her aura," she said. Tyria hesitated again before she delivered, "And I felt that connection go out with her life, too."

Syal gasped in shock, placing her hand on her mouth simultaneously, at hearing that her baby sister had died. Iella immediately enfolded her remaining child into a loving, consoling embrace, and Wedge only stared back at the Tainers in shock.

"What?!" he asked, enraged at what he was just told.

"She's gone, Wedge," Kell said, his own voice grief-stricken. "Jesmin and Myri are with the Force now."

"No!" Wedge shouted, standing up. "How could this happen?!"

"They were on a mission with Wraith Squadron to assassinate the Hapan royal bloodline," Kell explained, his voice on the edge of stability as his wife broke down to tears along with the Antilles women. "Face told us first, and he and the two of us thought it would be best if you heard it come from us in person."

"Face, that coward!" Wedge shouted. "He doesn't have the balls to tell me himself-"

"_We_ wanted to tell you, Wedge," Kell interrupted. "Face obliged us."

After growling at Kell, Wedge went back to facing the fact that his youngest daughter had just died. "I... I just can't believe this!" Wedge exclaimed, his brow now perspiring in sweat. "Not my Myri! She can't be dead! This can't be true! I... I..." Then he clasped at his chest and fell back against the sofa behind him, his eyes fluttering shut.

"Daddy!" Syal exclaimed.

"Wedge!" Iella followed up as she and her daughter, as well as the Tainers, rushed to his side.

After checking her husband's pulse, Iella looked to her surviving offspring. "Syal, call the emergency frequency! We have to get your father to a hospital!"

.

"You sure Buage can hold down your penthouse while we're gone, Peb?" Jaden asked the Chagrian as he and the eleven other now-reinstated Jedi apprentices boarded Peb's transport shuttle.

"Quite sure, Master Korr," Peb answered as he sat in the pilot seat of the shuttle "Buage isn't a big spender anyway, so I doubt he'll dry up my funds too much."

"That's good to know," Jaden replied as he buckled himself up in the copilot seat. "So what say we get this ship..." He trailed off as he felt danger spiking through the Force.

"What is it, Master?" Peb asked.

"You don't feel that, Peb?" Jaden asked.

"Feel what?"

"The danger being felt through the Force right now?"

Peb only shrugged his shoulders in response.

"Something's wrong here," Jaden said. Then his eyes shot up in shock when his danger sense alerted him a little bit more specifically to the threat. "Peb, we have to get off the ship _now_!" he exclaimed as he unbuckled his safety harness and raced to leave the ship.

Wordlessly, Peb also unbuckled and followed along, albeit still curious as to what the Grand Master was so worried about.

Meanwhile, the latter was shouting to the apprentices, who just seated themselves in the passenger cabin, as he ran past, "Get off the ship now!"

"What's going on?" Krei'lap asked as he and the others followed in Peb's wake.

"I have no idea, just do what he says," Peb told the Bothan as they and the others trailed Jaden.

All of them were just off the shuttle before it suddenly exploded, throwing all of them prone to the hangar floor.

They all turned to their backs to view the damage done before they looked up the ceiling that had been opened for the shuttle's departure from Peb's penthouse. From there, an entire squad of Chandrilan independent soldiers dropped in and rappelled down to the hangar floor to confront the Jedi, who all stood up on their feet.

The last to drop from the open ceiling, albeit without a rappel line, was Jeila Humda, who landed in a crouch before springing up to her full height to activate a green-bladed lightsaber.

"Give me back my lightsaber, Master Korr," Humda growled.

"Somehow, I doubt that'll make a difference," Peb retorted to no one in particular.

No more words were exchanged as Humda's accompanying soldiers began shooting the Jedi party.


	23. Chapter 23

Jaden, who wielded both his own lightsaber and that of Humda's, and the Jedi apprentices deflected the laser bolts fired at them back toward Humda's soldiers with their ignited sabers. But instead of striking any of the elderly former Jedi's goons down, the lasers dissipated against purple shields that appeared whenever a bolt threatened to hit them.

"They have shield generators somehow!" Jaden exclaimed for the apprentices.

"No, you idiots!" Humda exclaimed to the soldiers. "I told you, only aim for the apprentices! Leave Korr to me!"

Once the barrage of lasers focused away from Jaden, Humda leaped in and began dueling him again, expertly parrying away each of his own strikes with her one blade against Jaden's two. It was only a few seconds before she began forcing him back toward the wall behind him.

In the meantime, the soldiers' got the same idea from their squad leader, who motioned them to move forward. Of course, their Jedi opponents had to back away from the quickening onslaught of lasers.

"That a spare lightsaber?" Jaden asked Humda, not slowing down an iota in his defense against her.

"What's it to you, Korr?" Humda asked, not slowing down in her attacks any either.

"Just trying to make idle chitchat," Jaden quipped. "You also mind telling me how you managed to sneak a bomb aboard that shuttle of ours?"

At that point, Humda managed to relieve Jaden of the pommel of what was her lightsaber out of his hand, rendering it in two pieces on the hangar bay floor. This forced the Grand Master to wield his own lightsaber in a two-handed grip, which did nothing to stop Humda from backing him up to the wall behind him.

The only reason she called the duel to a halt in locking their blades together was to say, close to her foe's face, "When you're a Jedi, never trust anyone with a bias against them, no matter what the credits."

_Buage_, Jaden thought disgustingly before he had to continue his backward progress to that wall behind him. If and the other apprentices were going to get out of this, he was going to have a serious talk with Peb - and he'll try to keep any notion of "I told you so" out of his lecture."So why didn't any of my apprentices sense that bomb?" he asked Humda.

"Force shadow I cast upon them," Humda answered within the whirling of her constant strikes. "Pity it didn't work on you though, Master Korr."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't have got your lightsaber back," Jaden said. "Oh, wait," he added as a quip.

Growling, Humda increased the ferocity of her strikes, forcing Jaden back faster, with the wall just meters behind him.

Meanwhile, as the apprentices were forced back closer to the wall that their Grand Master neared, Yellacaba received a bolt in her right shoulder and went down to the floor like a tonne of bricks, emitting a feral yet pained Wookiee roar along the way. However, she still had the superhuman strength to roll out of the way from the bolts that then scorched the floor that she was just on.

With her good arm, Yellacaba sent out a desperate Force wave, which blasted back two of the fifteen soldiers there all the way to the back of the hangar. They crashed against the wall behind them and collapsed to the floor. Those two troops weren't out for long, for they quickly stood back up as sparks began playing off their belts.

[The shield generators are on their belts!], Yellacaba roared to her fellow apprentices. [They can't hold up against the Force!]

"Nothing can," Qana muttered with a determinate tone. "You heard her, guys, use the Force against them!" the Caamasi apprentice exclaimed to his friends and allies.

As one, the Jedi apprentices stuck out their free open palms toward the enemy soldiers and sent out a unified invisible wave that blew them all back toward the opposite end of the hangar. Like their two fellows, who were now firing more bolts at Yellacaba, who, in turn, was using her good arm to bat away those bolts with her regained lightsaber, the soldiers blown back by the collective Force wave collapsed to the floor to just as quickly push themselves back up when their belts sparked.

Soon, the apprentices began regaining ground against the soldiers as the latter party were forced to scatter throughout the hangar bay in order to find cover. From there, those who relied only on their instincts and training fought for their very lives as they dodged the very projectiles they fired against those who fought with their training, instincts, and the Force.

Meanwhile, Jaden's back finally hit the wall behind him, prompting the Grand Master to spin out of the way as Humda skewered her blade through the hangar wall. Her opponent then punched her in the face with his free hand, forcing her back to quickly bring her blade up in a defensive strike against Jaden. But before she could regain the advantage of pure intensity against the Grand Master, she had to scatter away as laser bolts began to fire randomly throughout the hangar, thanks to the now-disorderly soldiers battling against the apprentices.

But while he batted away shots that were either fired at him on purpose or incidentally, Jaden gave chase to the fleeing Humda, who was also redirecting any and all shots that were unintentionally heading their way for her.

Once Jaden closed in on her, she immediately whirled around to face him, and the first thing they did was clash again. However, Jaden stood his ground, and after several more strikes, during which Humda fought with more desperation to escape the anarchy that this battle devolved to than anything, the calm Grand Master of the Jedi Order allowed the Force to be his only source of control in the midst of this chaos.

Hence, it was no wonder how he was able to more easily parry away all of Humda's defensive strikes and actually begin managing to force her back and away from the hangar's pedestrian exit.

"Hold your fire!" Humda desperately shouted to her troops after a while.

But the lasers didn't stop firing or reflecting off lightsaber blades.

And it made Jaden's smile all the more painful to glance at when he smiled at her with that arrogant Jedi self-righteousness of his.

"You can't stop the Jedi recovery now, Humda," Jaden murmured.

That very line was what drove the elderly former Jedi forgo her fear of dying here and renew her feral tactic against Jaden.

But the Grand Master used that resultant loss of balance by making Humda inadvertently step forward and past his pivoting form, impaling her with his blade.

Humda, reeling from the pain in her gut, looked up with anger and hatred at Jaden, and she only saw apology in his expression.

As soon as the Grand Master retracted his blade from Humda's body, one of the soldiers exclaimed, "The boss is dead, everyone! Retreat! Retreat!"

The bolts stopped firing, and the apprentices allowed their enemies to escape as the soldiers fired their rappel lines for the hole in the roof they entered through.

Soon, the soldiers were all out of the building.

"We won, everyone!" Peb exclaimed in celebration, holding up his still-beaming lightsaber up to the air.

His fellow apprentices cheered with him enthusiastically, also bearing their blades like their Chagrian counterpart.

"We're not done yet, my friend," Jaden said after going up behind Peb and placing a hand on his shoulder. "We have to find Buage now."


	24. Chapter 24

Buage, carrying a suitcase in each hand, walked hurriedly for the spaceport that would ferry him off Chandrila and leave him on the beach world of Barga. On that planet, he would live out the rest of his days in contentment, knowing that he didn't have to work for any two-bit Jedi apologist like Peb Liko anymore.

It wasn't long before he entered the port, and a couple hours later, having gone through all of the proper customs channels to board the Barga shuttle, and making sure that his luggage would arrive to the planet with him on a different flight, he was finally sitting in a first-class passenger seat. It was now only a matter of waiting out the half-hour to pass before the vessel would launch.

It was only fifteen minutes before the shuttle would head for space, a feminine, sensuous voice coming from the aisle beside Buage asked, "Excuse me, sir, but security needs to double-check your clearance."

The Aqualish looked to his side to find a stewardess standing there. Before he looked up to identify her, he asked, "What do you mean double-check my clearance-" He stopped once he saw the face of Ceraz Polin, the Zeltron Jedi apprentice.

"I said we will have to double-check your clearance, sir," Ceraz repeated with a subtle hand gesture. "Come with me, please."

Wordlessly, Buage stepped up and followed the Zeltron to the back of the first-class passenger cabin and through the still-open exit of the shuttle, where beings of various species were still boarding for Barga.

A few minutes later, Buage, having snapped out of Ceraz's mind-trick, found himself sitting in a chair before a metal table inside a closed interrogation room. On the tabletop were several bags of drugs, and on the other side of the table was a stern-looking Kadas'sa'Nikto security officer of the spaceport glaring back at him.

"Well, do you mind telling us why you attempted to smuggle almost a dozen bags of glitterstim to Barga, Mr. Buage?" the guard asked.

_Damn those Jedi_, the Aqualish thought dejectedly.

.

"Good thing I kept a spare ship," Peb said as he and his fellow Jedi, including Jaden and Ceraz, the latter having just returned from framing Buage for drug smuggling, boarded his SoroSuub yacht in the basement of his penthouse.

Five minutes later, the SoroSuub's engines were flaring, and then it blasted forward down the subterranean tunnel that stretched out for several miles. Once the yacht reached the end of the tunnel, the waterfall hiding it over a steep cliff-face parted to allow the SoroSuub to soar out through the air.

Getting past planetary control was easy for someone of Peb's reputation - even in spite of Humda's attack on him and the other Jedi in his own penthouse - and soon, the newly-dubbed SoroSuub _Jedi Recovery_ sped off into hyperspace.

.

Over Corulag, three Galactic Alliance Star Destroyers broke apart into flaming debris, spilling out those valiant crew members who weren't incinerated by the blasts so that they would die in the cold vacuum of space. What few Alliance warships remained took the deaths of their Destroyers to turn away from the might of the Hapan Battle Dragons that destroyed their capital vessels and decided to aid the civilian effort to evacuate the planet.

Aboard the flagship of the Hapan fleet, the _Queen's Liege_, Commander Gebbam couldn't help but smile in satisfaction as she watched the remnants of the Corulag defense fleet turn tail and run from the fierce Battle Dragons like the cowards they were.

Gebbam was broken out of her reverie when the commlink on her belt beeped and she had to answer it. "Commander Gebbam here."

"Commander," Admiral Joon's voice responded, "how goes the offensive over Corulag?"

"It goes great, Admiral," Gebbam answered. "The enemy fleet is fleeing before us at this very moment. I think it's safe to say that Victory is imminent with my fleet."

"That's excellent to hear, Commander," Joon said, a hint of smile in her tone. "Reports coming in from Balmorra and Borleias repeat similar claims of triumph. I daresay, Commander, that victory is imminent for the entire Consortium in this war if the Alliance continues to fall at this rate."

"I agree, Admiral," Gebbam replied. "It will not be long before Coruscant is ours."

.

The Hapan Royal Shuttle landed on the roof of the Imperial Center on Bastion before Head of State Vitor Reige and the entire Moff Council standing patiently to meet the Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium.

They only had to wait a few minutes before the boarding ramp to the Royal Shuttle lowered to the roof's ground, allowing the ten-year-old Queen Mother to walk down the ramp with her handmaidens, her adviser, and chamberlain in tow. The entire roof was silent as the royal party walked toward the Imperial party to greet them.

"It is a solemn honor to meet you, Your Majesty," Reige said with the utmost respect.

"Likewise, Head of State Reige," Allana responded with a simple nod. "If you would allow me," she then said as more of a pretense than anything else, "I would like to introduce my party for the purposes of this upcoming meeting."

"Of course, Your Highness," Reige answered.

Once Allana finished introducing each individual in her company to her Imperial counterparts, Reige took that as a sign to introduce each of the Moffs, including Daala and Lecersen, even as the both of them were already familiar to Allana back when her grandparents were raising her.

"Well, then, with all the introductions out of the way," Allana said with Reige finished, "shall we enter the Imperial Center to begin our discussion on the terms of this peace treaty, Head of State Reige?"

"Certainly, Your Majesty," Reige answered before turning with the Moffs and leading the Hapans to the roof's entrance to the building.


	25. Chapter 25

A dozen Hapan collector vessels descended from the skies of the Consortium's capital planet toward the Royal Palace. They were each given the clearings to land in the hangar bay, and upon the opening of their landing ramps, the crew members inside each of the ships began unloading various pieces of metal and electronics on hoversleds toward the entrance of the Palace in single-file.

Several minutes passed before each of the individuals began entering the bowels of the Palace via turbolifts, where they then walked down a few corridors to finally enter a grand, silvery yet empty room. The only other people inside were the brunette-haired Coordinator Eru and the blonde-haired engineer/theoretical Hapan physicist Dr. Quyi Cavaz. The two of them watched the proceedings as the unloading crew members began to form pile up the metals and electronics in various places throughout the room.

"I will get my own scientific crew to assemble this and get it working, Coordinator Eru?" Cavaz asked.

"Yes, yes, you will get your assistants, Dr. Cavaz," Eru responded with an annoyed tone. "You have no need to worry, especially after asking five times already."

"With a project like this, I want nothing to go wrong, Coordinator," Cavaz argued. "If anything should go wrong, we could very well destroy..."

Eru placed a silencing finger over her own mouth to indicate that the doctor should keep her mouth quiet in front of the still-unloading crew members. "This is top secret, remember, Doctor?"

"Oh, yes, of course," Cavaz responded with remembrance. "I'm just anxious about this project."

"It is quite an undertaking, indeed," Eru agreed.

"Speaking of which, do you know why Her Majesty wants this built?" Cavaz asked.

Eru shrugged. "I never question the Queen Mother, Doctor. Not unless I believe she makes an obviously foolhardy decision, and even then, it would be hard to argue with her without risking imprisonment or death."

"Why do you think the Queen Mother wants this?" Cavaz asked.

"I don't give thought to such things," Eru said. "Why? Have you?"

"Well, not that it's in my place," Cavaz began, "but do you think this might be Her Majesty going mad with power?"

Eru looked at the physicist in shocked askance. "I beg your pardon, Doctor?"

Cavaz opened her mouth to reply, only to look back at the crew members still unloading the incoming pieces of equipment needed to build what the Queen Mother wanted. Although they didn't mind the doctor's open hypothesis that the leader of their whole government might be greedy for more power, it was not wise to continue to vocalize such opinions out in the open like this. So Cavaz looked back at Eru and nodded her head off to one side to indicate that they should talk somewhere more private and allow the crew members to conclude their work in peace.

Once the two of them entered a secluded, quiet corner of the room, Cavaz said, "Given this war against the Galactic Alliance, and how easily the Consortium is crushing them, this empire can very well become the next ruling power in the galaxy. And I think that the Queen Mother knows that."

"So what does that have to do with this project, Doctor?" Eru asked.

"It may have everything to do with this project," Cavaz argued. "I mean, with the Queen Mother expanding her power in the galaxy, she may want to expand her power even further-"

"Alright, that's enough," Eru interrupted. "You have no right to question the actions of Her Majesty like this anymore, Doctor."

Cavaz looked like she was about to continue her argument again, but instead, she only released a sigh of defeat. "Very well. I live to serve the Queen Mother."

Eru nodded. "As do we all, Doctor."

.

Wedge's eyes fluttered open to find himself in a blue gown, laying in a plain white bed, in a hospital room. Around him were a Selonian doctor, Iella, Syal, Kell, Tyria, and Garik "Face" Loran who looked back at him with relieved expressions.

"Good afternoon, General Antilles," the Selonian nodded. "How are you feeling?"

Wedge hesitated before he asked, "What happened to me."

"You had a heart attack, darling," Iella answered. "It was from the stress of learning what happened to Myri."

Wedge then looked at the bald-headed man in the room. "Face, can you get closer?"

"What is it, Wedge?" Face asked, concern gleaming his expression as he lowered himself near his friend.

Immediately, Wedge punched him straight in the nose, sending him stumbling back across the room and crashing against the wall behind him, collapsing prone to the floor afterward. In the meantime, everyone else, especially the doctor, was startled at what just occurred.

"That was for sending Myri and Jesmin to a suicide mission," Wedge muttered. "Never mind the heart attack."

Face then picked himself up from the floor and wiped the cuff of his sleeve across his bloodied nose. "I had no choice, Wedge," Face argued before sniffing in the blood that remained in his nostrils. "The order came in from Chief of State Rodan himself. Times are desperate now; the Alliance is falling apart, and the Consortium is making headway into the rest of the galaxy."

"Can you please get to the part where this involves the necessity of my daughter dying, along with Kell and Tyria's?" Wedge retorted.

"That's a risk that soldiers like Jesmin and Myri always have to take, Wedge," Face said. "I thought that you of all people would know that by now."

Wedge's nostrils flared before he looked at his wife. "Iella, I want to contact Admiral Phennir's office. I need to speak to him."

"What?" Iella asked. "Why?"

"Never mind why," Wedge growled. "I need to speak to him."

Iella spared one last glance at her husband, and everyone else mirrored her concerned look for the veteran pilot, before she took out her commlink and tapped in the numbers to Phennir's office.

After a while, a female voice said, "This is Admiral Turr Phennir's office. How may I help you?"

"Wedge Antilles would like to speak to Admiral Phennir," Iella said.

"Admiral Phennir is booked for the next week," the secretary's voice replied. "If you would like to make an appointment-"

Wedge abruptly grabbed the commlink out of Iella's hand and spoke into it, "I want to speak to Phennir right _now_!"

"Oh, um... right away, Mr. Antilles," the secretary's frightened voice responded. "Let me put you on hold."

Wedge waited impatiently as the soothing, tranquil music coming from the other end played, which only further grated the veteran's nerves and made everyone else in the room more concerned.

"General Antilles, if you don't calm down, you may very well have another heart atta-" the Selonian tried to tell him.

But Wedge silenced him with a glare, then looked back to the commlink when the music ended and Turr Phennir's voice came. "What do you want from me, Antilles?"

"I want you to launch a war against the Hapes Consortium, Admiral," Wedge said in the most diplomatic tone he could muster. He ignored the shocked expressions of everyone else in the room.

"Why in any of the Nine Hells would I do that?" Phennir asked.

"Because they killed my daughter, Phennir," Wedge responded, his tone now getting close to growling. "They must pay for that."

"Antilles, I'm not going to launch a war against the Hapes Consortium just because-"

"Phennir, if you don't do this, I swear to the Force, I will come after you and I will-"

"There's no need to threaten here. Let's think about this rationally, shall we, General?" Phennir asked.

"Don't talk to me about rationality when you worked for the Empire three decades ago," Wedge growled.

"You're not making a good case to me for going to war with the Consortium yet, Antilles."

"And you're not making a good case for me not to come down to your office and gut you like a fish so I can come out of retirement and take your place as the military leader of the Confederation," Wedge intoned.

Phennir snorted. "I'd like to see that, Antilles."

"Don't tempt me," Wedge said with a feral, humorless smile. "Have you forgotten that I led both Rogue and Wraith Squadrons back in my heyday, Phennir? I can only imagine the look of regret on your face when I barge into your office, having killed every single one of your men and women, just to get to you and replace you by force."

"Wedge, wait," Face said.

"You shut up," Wedge said.

"No, I mean, I can help you," Face said.

Everyone in the room looked at him in askance.

"Give me the comm," Face said, holding out his hand.

"Why?" Wedge asked.

"Because I'll do a better job convincing the good Admiral to go to war with the Consortium than you," Face answered.

"How can I trust you?" Wedge asked. "After you sent Myri and Jesmin to their deaths?"

"Why would I turn down assistance for the Alliance?" Face retorted.

Grimacing, Wedge reluctantly handed the comm over to his friend.

"Admiral Phennir?" Face asked through the comm.

"I'm listening, General Loran," Phennir came back.

"If you aid the Alliance in defeating the Hapes Consortium," Face said, "I will guarantee the Confederation half of the Galactic Alliance's territory in the event of victory against the Consortium."

Phennir whistled. "Sounds like a lot to promise, General. How can I be sure you'll keep your word? How can I be sure that Chief of State Rodan will even agree to these terms?"

"I will let Chief Rodan know about this agreement later," Face said. "And I can assure you, he will have no choice but to agree if he wants to win this war. Besides, I can't afford to double-across the Confederation, what with the Alliance's numbers dwindling as we speak, there's no chance we can stand up to the Confederation's fleet."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, General Loran," Phennir said. "Very well, I will have to speak to Prime Ministers Teppler and Delpin, but I'm sure they won't turn this offer down. As far as you're concerned, the Galactic Alliance has the aid of the Confederation." Phennir then signed off from the other end.

Face then handed the commlink back to Iella before looking back at Wedge. "You're welcome," he said.

"Who would've thought the Confederation to be an ally to the Galactic Alliance?" Syal commented.


	26. Chapter 26

Sitting around the small table set up in the Moff Meeting Hall, Hapan Queen Mother Allana Djo Solo and Imperial Head of State Vitor Reige regarded each other as equals in spite of the age difference between them; if it weren't for the former's position as Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium, one would regard this as a setup to some kind of satirical skit on the HoloNet. Behind each of them stood their parties - Allana with her royal company, and Reige with the Moffs.

"Head of State Reige," Allana began, "given this current war between the Hapes Consortium and the Galactic Alliance, my subjects and military commanders are concerned that the Imperial Remnant may very well become an enemy to contend with. Therefore, I am here to establish a peace treaty so that hostilities will not erupt between our respective governments, especially not when the Consortium is still occupied with crippling the remains of the Alliance military."

Reige nodded. "Normally, I would be in agreement with you, Your Majesty. A peace treaty between our governments that would most likely last beyond the duration of this war that the Remnant is not a part of would be beneficial to both our parties."

"But?" Allana asked.

Reige sighed. "Your Highness, as I'm sure that you're quite aware of the Remnant's politics, and no offense to any of my party present..." He looked around to the Moffs accompanying him before refocusing his attention back on the Queen Mother. "But the problem that we would both face here would be the resultant legal dissent that would oppose this action."

Allana knew exactly what Reige was talking about; just being the Chume'da in the Consortium exposed her to enough of the treachery and backstabbing politics that the ruling government of the Transitory Mists was best known for. No doubt that Reige probably faced the same amount of betrayals when it came to the likes of the Moffs on a regular basis; and agreeing to a peace treaty when the Remnant had nothing to gain from it would only make Reige's position even more tenuous; and that legal political dissent that the Head of State just mentioned could cause a major crisis at best, if not an outright disaster at worst.

"I understand that perfectly, Head of State," Allana said. "Still, I, as Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium, cannot afford the possibility that the Imperial Remnant can take advantage of whatever state that military will be by the end of this war and attack us."

"Fair enough, Your Majesty," Reige nodded. "So do you have anything to suggest a mutually beneficial agreement between our governments?"

Allana took a moment to think to herself before asking, "In the event of victory in this war, I will grant the Imperial Remnant half the territory that the Consortium will gain outside the Transitory Mists."

Murmurs and whispers started among the Moffs, and Reige turned away from Allana to address the subordinate council. "Silence!" They all quieted down immediately, and he turned back to the Queen Mother. "An interesting proposal, to say the least, Your Highness."

"But I'm not done yet, Head of State," Allana said.

"Oh?" Reige inquired.

"To be frank with you," Allana said, "while I maybe fairly inexperienced as Queen Mother, I understand enough to see through the most obvious seams, at least, in an agreement. And I don't need the Force to figure that you, if not your Moff Council at least, were thinking, 'How would such a peace treaty stop us from attacking the Consortium fleet anyway when that war of theirs against the Galactic Alliance ends? We could chance taking all of the territory rather than just half.'"

Reige couldn't help but smirk. "Very good, Your Highness. How would such a peace treaty stop us from attacking your fleet and try to take all of your territory when this war is over?"

"Because, even as the Consortium is still occupied with tackling the Alliance," Allana said, "I feel that it is still strong enough to take on your well-equipped fleet, Head of State Reige, at this point, at least. That is, of course, if you don't agree to what this treaty will really be about."

"And what will this treaty be about, Your Majesty?" Reige asked.

"A partnership between our governments," Allana answered. "You will enter this war with us, or risk going against us. You can be guaranteed half the gains and have peace, or try to accumulate all the territorial wealth for yourself and launch yet another galactic war, if not prolong this one already."

"Theoretically, entering this war with the Consortium assures that neither government would dare launch yet another war with the other after just finishing up a war against a mutual enemy like the Galactic Alliance," Reige said. "But at this point, given how relatively weak the Alliance is, it hardly seems like you need us at all to help you."

"That would be true," Allana said. "But stranger things have happened during war. You never know when the tide of the conflict can turn to the weaker combatant."

"A wise philosophy, I must say," Reige commented. "So tell me, what do you think could possibly help the Galactic Alliance gain even a remote chance at conquering your powerful fleet, Your Majesty?"

Allana offered a girly-like shrug. "Any number of things," she answered in her queen-like tone. "Such as that Confederation aligning with them for territorial gains, for one."

Reige raised an eyebrow. "The Confederation? Assisting the Alliance? I'd like to see that."

"You don't think it's possible, Head of State?" Allana asked.

"Well, I'm curious as to why the Confederation would align with the Alliance anyway, territorial gains aside," Reige replied. "As I just said, the Alliance is fairly weak. The likes of Prime Ministers Teppler and Delpin, as well as Admiral Phennir, would not be so foolish as to ally with Fyor Rodan's crumbling government at this point. It would make more sense to align with the Consortium, even if they didn't have to do a thing in the remaining course of the war; and maybe even take advantage of your weakened military in the aftermath and try for all the gains."

"And you think I would so easily allow the Confederation to enter an alliance with my Consortium, Head of State?" Allana asked. "Keep in mind, aside from the few troubles between the Consortium and the Empire prior to the Pellaeon-Gavrisom Treaty so many years ago, neither of our respective governments have any major gripes with the other. To align with us would at the very least officially assure that we would not go to war.

"The Confederation, on the other hand, formed an alliance with the infamous Heritage Council, which tried to murder my mother and I just a few years ago."

"So what does that mean?" Reige asked. "That you would risk a war against the Confederation even when there are no active hostilities between your government and theirs, and when you are already in the midst of a war?"

"It would be uncharacteristically stupid of a Queen Mother," Allana agreed. "Still, if I had them as allies, I would watch my back more carefully around them than I would my own people, or those of the Remnant's."

Allana had no doubt that either Reige or those in the Moff Council, or maybe even both for that matter, were thinking that if Allana wouldn't put as much attention on them as she would with the Confederation as allies, it could very well open up an opportunity to turn on the Consortium.

Of course, they would be wrong. If anything, Allana would watch her back around the Remnant just as much as her people _and_ those in the Confederation if the latter became official allies. But to tell Reige that would only jeopardize the alliance between the Consortium and the Remnant.

"Indeed," Reige said, donning an obvious poker face. No doubt he was thinking what Allana had guessed he thought; and from the barely-restrained smiles from most of the Moffs, such as Daala, Lecersen, and Vansyn, she had them pegged as those who would risk turning on the Consortium, whether it'd be during the war or after.

"Very wise, Your Majesty," Reige said. "Very wise. Very well... I will agree to your alliance."


	27. Chapter 27

In the copilot seat of the hyperspace-bound _Jedi Recovery_, Peb, having glanced long enough at the ship's sensors, looked over to the piloting Jaden and asked, "Why are we in the Unknown Regions, Master Korr?"

"You didn't read the news on your datapad today, Peb?" Jaden asked.

The Chagrian Jedi apprentice looked suitably embarrassed as he answered. "No, Master."

"That will be another error on your part that you will have to remedy with me," Jaden said. "But for now, I'll just tell you that the Hapes Consortium is attacking several major Galactic Alliance planets near the Coruscant system because of the war between them. I think it's best that we see ourselves away from this conflict."

"But, Master, isn't it the duty of the Jedi Order to help end violence as much as possible?" Peb asked.

"With a conflict as grand as this, and with our numbers still too few to make any difference, Peb-"

"We have the Force, Master," Peb interrupted with incredulity. "Isn't that enough to pull us through and make us powerful enough to end the conflict between the Alliance and the Hapans?"

"Don't interrupt me again, Apprentice Liko," Jaden intoned.

Peb's eyes widened with self-shame before he lowered his head in obeisance. "Apologies, Master Korr."

Jaden nodded in acceptance of Peb's humility. "Normally, I would agree with you completely, Peb. But if we enter this conflict too soon given our current size, we won't be helping anyone. And also, since the Force has not been all that good to the Order, what with recent events and all, I'm honestly not all that comfortable in letting it be any of our guides right now."

Peb looked at the Grand Master in shock at what he just said. Jaden looked back at him in turn with a regretful expression.

The human sighed. "I know what I just said sounds unbelievable for a Jedi, Peb. But you have to understand, if you were there, on Coruscant, watching all those Jedi die before Darth Plagueis, and survive like I did... you would have doubts, too."

"So why should I, or any of the other apprentices in the passenger cabin back there, follow a Jedi Grand Master who is doubtful with his faith in the Force?" Peb asked.

"You think Grand Master Skywalker didn't have his doubts?" Jaden asked. "You think Master Yoda didn't? We all face doubts, Peb; that's the price of being a sentient individual."

Peb grimaced. "I just hope that you will find your faith in the Force again, Master Korr. I'll still follow you, because you know better than I or any of my fellow apprentices on how to lead and reestablish the Order."

Jaden nodded. "Good. Anything else, Apprentice Liko?"

"Yes, I do have one more question concerning our placement in the war," Peb said.

"State it."

"Why aren't we returning to the Consortium instead of running off to the Unknown Regions?" Peb asked. "We're still allowed in the Transitory Mists, even with the anti-Jedi prejudice still roaming the sixty-three planets."

"Because I'm afraid that the Queen Mother will force us to fight in the war when we're still not ready," Jaden said. "And even if she is smart enough to realize that it's foolish to risk demolishing the Jedi Order for good, even incidentally, I doubt she'll be able to fight back against the political dissenters who'd most likely push her into coercing us to get involved because of our special skills."

"Just so her power base can be more stable," Peb concluded.

"Especially in a time of war," Jaden nodded. "Even in a war like this, where the Consortium is clearly winning. You never know when the tide of war can and will turn, Peb."

"I understand your view, Master Korr, even if I don't fully agree with it," Peb said. "But where exactly are we going?"

"We need to set up a base," Jaden said. "And because of the war, setting up anywhere near Alliance space is too dangerous. Which is why we'll choose the best planet to support us in the Unknown Regions."

"Which one?" Peb asked.

Jaden smiled at the Chagrian. "Zonama Sekot."

.

"You told Phennir what, Loran?" Galactic Alliance Chief of State Fyor Rodan screamed at his handheld commlink.

"Chief Rodan, you do understand that the Alliance is under such dire straits in terms of resources and soldiers..." General Loran tried to tell him from the other end.

"I am _not_ going to be having this government align with so much as a Confederation mouse droid, never mind its entire military, even if it means the end of the Alliance!" Rodan practically screamed. "Especially not when we have to give them half our territory if we can even win this war!"

"That's treason, Chief Rodan," Loran replied evenly. "To turn down military aid from a willing foreign government in a time of crisis is something that not even Natasi Daala would sink to, no matter what the costs."

"How _dare_ you accuse _me_ of treason, Loran?" Rodan retorted angrily. "I have the power to fire you right this instant and see to it that you live out the rest of your days as a Feral in the Vongformed underworld of Coruscant!"

"Well, even if you were to do that right now, Chief Rodan," Loran said with a more characteristic wry smirk in his tone, "it wouldn't make a difference, as Admiral Phennir just guaranteed that the Alliance will receive aid from the Confederation within the next twelve hours. And they will expect half of our territory if and when we beat the Hapans, Chief. So, in the meantime, you better begin selecting the worlds that would most likely be willing to join the Confederation. Oh, and by the way, I resign from my commission as head of Galactic Alliance Security, Chief Rodan. Goodbye." Loran then signed off from the other end.

Acting out on sheer frustration, Rodan squeezed his hand around his commlink before throwing it across his office to smash against the wall, where it crumbled to the floor in various metallic pieces.


	28. Chapter 28

A fleet of Confederation Star Destroyers dropped out of hyperspace to enter the Hapan-inhabited Corulag system, and immediately opened fire on the Battle Dragons. In response, the Dragons, who were already facing the Confederation entryway, began to fight back with their rotating laser cannons, and the Miy'til starfighters were vomited from the Dragons' hangar bays to engage the enemy's own fighters. Those Dragons who were facing elsewhere, either Corulag itself or in other directions, suffered greatly under the barrage of projectiles fired from the Confederation fleet as they turned to face them, even with their own cannons blazing against the enemy.

Aboard the _Queen's Liege_, one of the several Battle Dragons facing the way that the Confederation fleet entered from, Commander Gebbam gripped the armrests of her command chair as she braced against the impacts that the Dragon took from the Confederation onslaught. "Looks like that peace treaty with the Confederation is off the table," Gebbam said aloud for the rest of the crew members on the bridge.

"Commander!" the lieutenant at the sensor station reported. "We've already lost a quarter of our cannons to the enemy!"

"Keep firing, everyone!" Gebbam barked at the cannon operators on the bridge. "We don't stop until _all_ our cannons are gone!"

"Yes, ma'am!" the cannon operators responded in unison, not stopping for a millisecond in their own work.

Half an hour into the battle passed, and while the other Battle Dragons in the system lost several of their own laser cannons just as the _Queen's Liege_ did, the _Liege_ herself only lost roughly five more cannons. The Hapan fleet itself was now cut down to about a fourth of its size, and their enemy was getting close to the level with them.

As Gebbam stared out at the viewport of the flagship of this fleet with a determined expression, the inset comm on the right armrest of the command chair beeped. She answered it.

"Commander Gebbam," Admiral Joon's distressed voice came through, "are you being attacked by Confederation forces over Corulag right now?"

"You, too, Admiral?" Gebbam replied as her answer.

"Several of the other worlds that our fleet has captured so far have already been taken from us by the Confederation now," Joon elaborated. "I'm currently embattled over Borleias, and I've lost already more than half my forces to the still-powerful enemy, Commander. I'm preparing the remnants of my fleet to pull out, and I suggest you start to do the same before you accumulate any further unnecessary losses like I have."

"You can do that if you wish, Admiral, but my fleet is still capable of bringing down the Confederation fleet here," Gebbam said. "The Consortium has already expanded its territory over the past week; I, at least, don't intend to lose this system to the Confederation, of all things!"

"Fine, lead your fleet and yourself to your doom for all I care, Gebbam, just as Giggag and Nion did," Joon responded in scorn. "But I'll do the wise thing and get out of here while I still can." Joon then signed off.

As Gebbam looked back out toward the enemy fleet, her determination unfazed even after she witnessed an entire squadron of Miy'tils go up against a squad of old-fashioned X-wings, the commander thought, _What a coward. It's a wonder why Tenel Ka promoted her to be the head of the entire Hapan military_. _What a damned fool Joon is_.

Twenty minutes later, Gebbam thought, _What a damned fool I am_, as the _Liege_ was the last Hapan warship - never mind Battle Dragon, as the occupying fleet lost the last of its Miy'til squadron a mere five minutes earlier - in the Corulag system. The Dragon's engines and hyperdrive motivator were out, along with its very last cannon. And since the damage to the _Liege_ was now so great that their comms were destroyed, no one could call for a surrender to the Confederation even if Gebbam wanted to sue for peace.

No one aboard the _Liege_ had anywhere to turn to before the warship went up in flames against the still-mighty barrage of projectiles from the enemy fleet. The Second Battle of Corulag in the Third Galactic Civil War thus fulfilled the doomed destiny of its arrogant commander and her misguided subordinates.

.

Sitting on her prestigious throne aboard the _Dragon Queen II_, which was still orbiting Bastion, the Queen Mother's expression was grave as her chamberlain delivered the bad news.

Poik periodically looked up at Her Majesty and back to her own datapad as she made her report, her tone and inflection unsteady given the tragedy of what had occurred. "From these initial attacks, Milady, the Confederation forces have already managed to take from our fleet over fifty percent of the territory that we, in turn, originally took from the Galactic Alliance. Prominent military leaders such as Colonel Nion and Commanders Gebbam and Giggag perished in the respective systems that they were guarding, and Admiral Joon, General Booja, and Commander Illok opted to flee back to the Transitory Mists for safety.

"Overall, we have lost exactly sixty-one point four percent of our forces in the Alliance space e took so far, Your Majesty, which is exactly forty-eight point seven percent of the entire Consortium fleet."

Allana sighed. "I knew that the Alliance would turn to the Confederation," she growled. "And now this war is being renewed because the likes of Denjax Teppler and Genna Delpin want more territory to make their little government more relevant in the larger galactic community."

"If I may say so, Milady, you did at least manage to convince Head of State Reige to side with the Consortium," Poik pointed out with a half-enthusiastic tone. "We won't be fighting this renewed war alone now."

"Very true, Poik," Allana agreed evenly. "Still, given our significant losses now, the chances that the Imperial Remnant will turn on the Consortium, whether it'd be during the war or after, have no doubt increased. And while I have little doubt that Reige would be so low, the likes of Moffs Daala and Lecersen among others will need to have a close eye kept on each of them."

"Are you suggesting that we insert spies into the Remnant, Milady?" Poik inquired.

"Yes, but not just yet," Allana answered. "We want to keep any compromises to our partnership with the Remnant to a minimum for the duration of this war. Sending in spies when they would no doubt be caught by the paranoid Imperials is too much of a risk; they're not like the Alliance, where espionage was relatively easy for our secret agents."

"Understood, Your Majesty," Poik nodded. "So what will be our next move?"

"We gather up the likes of Admiral Joon and everyone else in our military," Allana said, "and with the Imperials on our side, we will spare neither the Confederation or the remains of the Galactic Alliance any mercy."


	29. Chapter 29

Wedge didn't know what Iella, Syal, or that Selonian doctor were complaining about; he never felt better commanding a fleet again, and having watched the Hapan fleet scramble off into hyperspace from Borleias and its now-occupying Confederation fleet did nothing but warm Wedge's heart. He hadn't felt like this since he made the Yuuzhan Vong bleed, metaphorically speaking, for their occupation here all those years ago.

Taken out of his victorious reverie, the inset comm on the right armrest of Wedge's command chair of his Star Destroyer, the _Confederate Freedom_, beeped for his attention. He activated it, and his face dropped into a scowl when Turr Phennir's voice came through.

"General Antilles," Phennir said in a tone that belayed any notion of bad blood between the two of them, "I understand that you have captured Borleias from the Hapans."

"I have, Admiral Phennir," Wedge said, trying to keep the edge of out of his voice. Even after all these years, he still despised having to work for an ex-Imperial, even if it meant avenging Myri. "What about it?"

"I thought that you'd like to know that the rest of the Confederate fleets around Duro and Fondor have succeeded against the Hapan armada," Phennir told him. "So far, we're beating back the Consortium pretty damn good, especially since we now have a little over half the territory they were just occupying."

"Hell of a good start," Wedge agreed reluctantly.

"Indeed," Phennir said. "I also wanted to congratulate you on your victory over Borleias, so congratulations. But that's not why I'm comming you, General."

"Then what are you comming me for, Admiral?" Wedge nearly growled.

"There have been reports from our scouts along the edge of Imperial Remnant territory of a Hapan fleet heavily rumored to be harboring Queen Mother Allana Djo Solo," Phennir told him. "I just told all the other commanders in our own armada about this to let everyone know that we should be ready for a comeback via a Hapan-Imperial alliance."

"Thank you for letting me know about this, Admiral," Wedge ground out. "My fleet and I will be ready for any Hapan-Imperial intrusion in the Borleias system."

"Good to know," Phennir responded evenly. "Until then, have a pleasant stay over Borleias, General." The Admiral then signed off.

"Yeah, kriff you, too, Phennir," Wedge muttered. Even though the ex-Imperial did nothing even indirectly attempt to press his buttons, Wedge still hated working the man himself, never mind the fact that he had to work for him.

But, as long as Phennir allowed him to act as one of the Confederation's major fleet leaders, especially considering the fact that Wedge actually threatened to kill him if he didn't have the government go into war against the Consortium, Wedge figured that he owed the ex-Imperial some slack and respect... at least when they were communicating.

Of course, that still didn't mean that Wedge had to like it all. And he knew that Phennir, for all the worth of the facade of calm and cool he erects around Wedge, still hated him not only for being a Rebel, but for betraying the Confederation during the Second Galactic Civil War. He was quite surprised that Denjax Teppler and Genna Delpin even allowed him back on Corellia; but then, it was Dur Gejjen's regime that convinced him to leave the Confederation in the first place.

If anything, though, he was more grateful to Teppler and Delpin than he ever would be to Phennir.

"Antilles, the only reason I'm even allowing you to command this fleet for Borleias is this: Prime Ministers Teppler and Delpin commanded me. So you should shut the hell up and be grateful for this opportunity to avenge your daughter."

Those words had been burned into Wedge's head. Oh, sure, he'll respect Phennir's words; he had to, anyway. But one of these days, when this war was over, he vowed to smack Phennir in the nose just like he did Face.

For now, however, Wedge put his hatred of Phennir off to the side of his mind and looked back out through the _Confederate Freedom_'s viewport to admire the view of Borleias.

The view of victory, he thought with a devilish grin.

.

"Well, that was easier than I thought," Peb said, still sitting in the _Jedi Recovery_'s copilot seat, after the ship dropped out of hyperspace.

Now seen through the _Recovery_'s viewport was the massive green-white orb of Zonama Sekot, the living world, spinning peacefully around its adoptive parent star in the vast distance of this unnamed system.

"Agreed," Jaden said from the pilot seat. "Even with the Force, I thought it'd take us much longer to find this planet."

"I thought you said you doubted the Force as a guide, Master," Peb pointed out.

Before Jaden could reply, he and Peb were both pulled into a trance as they felt a grand presence reach out for them through the Force. In the passenger cabin, the other apprentices became part of that trance at the same time.

_What do you want?_ Sekot asked telepathically through the voice of its Magister, Danni Quee.

_A base_, Jaden replied. _If you would be so kind to help the remnants of the Jedi Order_.

_I am always obliged to assist those who serve the Force as the Jedi_, Sekot replied.

_So you will accept us?_ Jaden asked.

_Of course_, Sekot answered. _You may take your ship down to any clearing you wish upon my surface_.

_Thank you_, Jaden said.

Then the trance ended, and Jaden and Peb looked at each other to offer a mutual nod to assure the other that they were okay.

"Is everyone okay back there?" Jaden called back to the cabin.

"We're all fine, Master Korr," Geuy Gagner replied. "What about you and Peb?"

"We're alright, too," Jaden responded before turning back to the _Recovery_'s console. "And we're going to Zonama."

The Grand Master of the Jedi Order then pushed down on the ship's throttle, and it rocketed for the world ahead.


	30. Chapter 30

Allana, sitting on her throne aboard the _Dragon Queen II_, looked at her wrist chrono and saw that it was only ten minutes before the Hapan-Imperial fleet over Bastion would go into hyperspace and travel for what was once Galactic Alliance space. For that, she felt nothing but set determination for the counterattacks that she, with her Imperial allies, would bring upon the Confederation and their Alliance forces. The Queen Mother also felt that this war maybe shorter than she thought; she had already commed Admiral Joon, General Booja, Commander Illok, and several other lesser-ranking commanders in the Hapan military who were currently located in the Transitory Mists to coordinate the convergence upon the Confederation-occupied territory.

She was snapped out of her reverie via the entrance of Poik carrying a commlink in both hands. Wordlessly, she approached the ten-year-old leader of the Hapes Consortium and knelt a few meters from the beginning of the steps leading up to the throne.

"A message from Doctor Quyi Cavaz, Milady," Poik said as she bowed her head in obeisance while simultaneously activating the comm.

Projecting from the aforementioned device, a blue-hued image of Dr. Cavaz's head shimmered above it. "Your Majesty," Cavaz said, "I am glad to report that the secret project that you have demanded has been completed and is ready for activation." From the tone of the physicist's voice, Allana could tell that Cavaz was more apprehensive than glad reporting this. "Would you like me to activate it immediately, or would you like to return to Hapes to see its activation?"

"Wait for me to return," Allana answered without hesitation. "I should be there in only a day."

Cavaz nodded. "Have a safe trip back home, Your Highness."

Allana then nodded to Poik to cut off the communication, as was proper.

"Now give me Head of State Reige, Poik," Allana commanded. "He must know that I will not be participating directly in the war effort."

Poik nodded wordlessly before typing in the numbers to Reige's comm frequency. After a few moments, a blue-hued image of the Imperial Head of State's head appeared.

"What is it that you wish to see me for, Your Highness?" he asked.

"I would like to inform you that the _Dragon Queen the Second_ and several other Battle Dragons will not be involved in the upcoming attacks against the Confederation," Allana explained. "I will see to it that you get an exact statistic of which Dragons won't be participating before we go into hyperspace."

"Thank you for letting me know, Your Majesty," Reige nodded with an even tone. "But may I ask why you won't be involved?"

"I have more pressing matters to attend to back on Hapes," Allana stated curtly. "Matters that, regrettably, have more priority than this war for me."

"Understandable," Reige replied, his voice still level. "Have a safe trip back home, Your Highness."

Again, at the Queen Mother's nod, Poik cut off the communication.

"Now let me contact the following commanders to let them know that they'll be accompanying me back to Hapes, and don't forget to make sure Reige gets his statistics, Poik..."

.

"Welcome to Zonama, Jedi," Magister Quee said after Jaden and his apprentices had all but disembarked from the _Jedi Recovery_ and entered the clearing on the planet that the Grand Master had selected. "Sekot has allowed you to stay here and set up your base for as long as you need and want."

"Thank you, Magister," Jaden nodded after he and his party stopped a meter from the blond-haired former scientist. "We are very appreciative of the help that Sekot is offering us."

Quee nodded back. "So, if you would all follow me, I will lead you to your cottages. The nearest village from here is La'okio, and I must say, it seems as if Sekot herself influenced you to choose this very spot, for we have quite a few individuals here who would like to expand their knowledge in the Force."

Jaden's brows lifted in with his smile as Quee turned and headed for the village that was only a few klicks away. As he and the apprentices followed suit, he said, "It would be a pleasure to have some Ferroans join the larger galactic community as part of the Jedi Order, Magister Quee."

"Oh, but it is not only a few Ferroans who are interested in joining the Order, Master Korr," Quee said without stopping, slowing, or turning her head. "There are also some Yuuzhan Vong who are interested."

Quee walked a few more steps before she stopped in realization that the Jedi behind her had also halted in their progress. She turned to regard them, and saw from their apprehensive features that they were wary over what she just said about the Yuuzhan Vong.

"I see that you have some objections over including Yuuzhan Vong into your Order," Quee stated.

Yellacaba roared. [The Vong are lucky they didn't attack Kashyyyk during their invasion, or else, I'd probably continue over to La'okio and tear every one of their arms off].

"And I'm not even part of that ar'krai thing anymore, and I'm still pissed that the Vong killed Borsk Fey'lya when they took Coruscant all those years ago," Krei'pla said.

Quee looked at the Wookiee and Bothan in askance before redirecting her gaze for Jaden. "It seems as if you need to teach your apprentices how to act more like Jedi, Master Korr." Her tone was as level as it could be.

Jaden sighed. "I intend to work on that, yes. Still, no offense, Magister Quee, but even if any of us were willing to take on a single Yuuzhan Vong into our Order, we highly doubt that the greater galaxy would be able to accept them."

"Those Yuuzhan Vong who are willing to be part of the Jedi Order are completely aware of that, Master Korr," Quee said. "As well as Sekot and I. But to continue to hide themselves away from the rest of the galaxy so that its native denizens would forever remember the Yuuzhan Vong as vicious invaders is quite regressive. If the galaxy wishes to be more accepting of others, they should do so for those who wish to be accepted, no matter who or what they are."

"I'm in agreement with you, Magister Quee," Jaden said.

"But?" she asked.

"We don't think it's the proper time for the galaxy to start accepting any Yuuzhan Vong yet," Jaden blew out.

Peb Liko grimaced. "Just as you don't think it's the proper time to get ourselves back into the greater galaxy," he muttered.

Jaden looked at him intently. "Must I explain to you again, Apprentice Liko, why we are simply incapable of doing that yet?"

Peb sighed. "No, Master."

"I thought so," Jaden said before looking back at Quee. "Listen, I'll be willing to set aside time to help train these Yuuzhan Vong, but I can't promise anything after that, Magister Quee."

"It's a start," Quee replied. "And I think that those Yuuzhan Vong will certainly be grateful to you for giving them that much, at least."

"May I ask how the Yuuzhan Vong are able to contact the Force now, Magister Quee?" Qana Hasa asked.

"Sekot is helping them as much as she can," Quee answered. "It isn't easy, as there are certainly individuals who would still rather return to their old ways than embrace those of the 'Jeedai,' as they call you. But in time, particularly after those who survived the war will be long gone, I think it is possible that the whole species can be saved, and that they can embrace the Force just as their ancient ancestors did all those eons ago back in their home galaxy. That's why Sekot and I think that it's best that your appearance here would establish a grand opportunity to expose the next generation of Yuuzhan Vong to the galaxy, to help them expand as peacekeepers and progressive leaders rather than the warmongers their own leaders once were."

"A noble goal, I admit," Jaden stated. "It might actually prove useful to the Jedi Order, now that I think about it."

"Then there is hope for the recovery of the Jedi yet," Quee said with a smile. She then turned back to resume her pace to La'okio, and the Jedi followed with less wariness.


	31. Chapter 31

Although it didn't feel as good to sit in a command chair as it did before, as she had been the overall commander of entire fleets before, Moff Daala still savored the feeling as she looked out to the white-streaked sight of hyperspace through Star Destroyer _Allegiance_'s primary viewport. And while she didn't appreciate a bit that she had to work for Reige, and by extension the ten-year-old Hapan Queen Mother, at least she saw a future where the Empire could be greater than it had been for decades. Finally eliminating the Galactic Alliance - which was essentially what the Rebel Alliance called themselves, anyway (and the irony didn't escape her mind that she had once ruled them) - and beating back the Confederation would be the first step for the Imperial Remnant to do away with "Remnant" in the government's name.

Then, after this war ends, Daala would allow enough time to pass for the Remnant to rebuild its fleet, turn on Reige, eliminate him as a potential threat, and go to war with the Hapes Consortium. From there, she would ensure Palpatine's dream of an Empire that could last a thousand years.

"Moff Daala," a male voice said beside her. She looked up and to her left to find a male ensign standing there bearing a commlink. "I think you may want to hear this."

"What is it?" she asked.

"A recording from the conversation between Head of State Reige and Queen Mother Djo Solo prior to the departure from Bastion, ma'am," the ensign answered. "Unbeknownst to the Head of State, one of your spies managed to get this recording. He felt it necessary that you listen to it for yourself and judge its worth to follow up on."

"Play it," Daala waved nonchalantly.

The ensign pressed a button on the commlink, and the voices of the Hapan Queen Mother and Imperial Head of State played out. When the conversation ended, Daala raised an eyebrow in consideration.

"Very interesting," she commented. "Now what could possibly coerce Her Majesty to drop out of the war effort and return home?"

"Perhaps it's cowardice, ma'am," the ensign offered. "She is just a little girl, after all."

Daala shook her head. "I doubt it. For a little girl, she's quite cunning, politically. And given the danger she's seen being raised by the Solos alone, never mind having to grow up in the Hapes Consortium, I don't think she's returning home simply because she's scared of the war. No, it must be something else, as she said. The obvious question is, what could it be?"

"You think it's necessary to send in spies on her?" the ensign asked.

Daala regarded him indignantly. "I think you've overstepped your bounds, soldier," she told him bitingly. "Return to your post at once."

The ensign looked back at her with fear before nodding hurriedly. "Yes, ma'am." He then turned away and left the bridge.

Daala then looked back out to the star-streaked viewport of the _Allegiance_ in contemplation. Yes, she would send in spies on the Queen Mother to determine what was so important for her to return to Hapes just after she made an alliance with the Remnant. Of course, it would be more difficult than usual, even with the new-found partnership between the two governments; just because Her Majesty said she wouldn't watch her back on the Imperials anymore than she would her own people, that didn't mean it was true. And even if it was, that still didn't guarantee any success of infiltrating the Consortium's highest ranks to get close to the ten-year-old monarch.

Still, it was worth a shot, Daala thought... provided that someone else would take the fall for it if any such spies were to undoubtedly be caught.

She wondered if she would be too busy battling Confederation forces to talk to her fellow Moff, Drikl Lecersen...

.

Yuuzhan Vong, Extolled and non-Extolled alike, stopped whatever they were doing and regarded the approaching Jedi with equal looks of apprehension and awe as the mixed-species group entered their humble village of La'okio, trailing behind the well-postured form of Magister Quee. All thirteen of the Jedi, in turn, looked around at the people they once viewed as savage barbarians who left chaos and destruction wherever they went with obvious wariness.

Even after Quee's assurances that the Yuuzhan Vong were worthy of being saved, Jaden and the apprentices still couldn't help but feel a unified feeling of fear as they gazed back among each of the aliens present.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Peb commented to Jaden.

"Do not let your fear consume you or cloud your judgment, Peb," the Grand Master replied, albeit with some uncertainty in his tone. "The Yuuzhan Vong are no longer our enemies. We have no good reason to regard them so derisively now."

"Speak for yourself, Master Korr," Macra said, an undercurrent of loathing tinging his tone as he continued to look at the aliens around him. "Some of us still have childhood nightmares from the invasion."

"What, do you wet your bed at night, too, Macra?" Peb retorted.

"I thought you said you changed, Liko," Macra countered.

"Hey, I didn't say it was a full one-eighty," Peb said.

"Enough," Jaden interjected. "We'll have no more arguing here."

Regardless of Jaden's claim, that didn't stop the murmurs beginning to rise from the Yuuzhan Vong around them, who spoke in hushed whispers, most likely how the Jedi argued like they did. Those who were clearly part of the Extolled seemed to have this slight look of disappointment on their wrinkled faces, as if the stories told to them of the legendary _Jeedai_ were nothing but that; mere stories.

"Hey, Magister Quee," Macra called. "How much longer before we reach our cabins-"

The Zabrak was cut off from saying anything further when a male Yuuzhan Vong, most likely a former warrior, darted from among the crowd and tackled Macra to the ground. The rest of the Jedi, as well as Quee, turned to regard the confrontation with shock while gasps of shock were emitted from most of the other aliens, particularly those in the Extolled.

"It has always been my dream to kill a _Jeedai_," the Vong said in guttural Basic as he pinned Macra down by his wrists. "I never thought I'd ever have the chance after the Great War ended. But now I can finally-"

The former warrior was interrupted by a might Wookiee paw swinging against the right side of his head and throwing him off of Macra. The Vong collapsed unconscious to the ground, and his attacker, Yellacaba, regarded him with a mild roar before offering a hand for Macra.

"Thanks," Macra said as he took the offered paw and let the Wookiee help him up to his feet. "I never understood why bad guys like that don't just shut up and simply kill their enemies in an instant."

"You got lucky, Marca," Areena Ajag said. "You should be grateful that 'bad guys' like that tend to gloat before attempting to kill their enemies."

"And you said there was no reason to fear the Yuuzhan Vong here," Peb whispered to Jaden.


	32. Chapter 32

It only took a day for the _Dragon Queen II_ to navigate around Consortium-Galactic Alliance-occupied space, reenter the Transitory Mists, and return to the Hapes system. From there, Allana took a shuttle down to her homeworld with Poik, and a few minutes after they landed, they, along with their shuttle pilot, were in the specialized room in the Fountain Palace's basement, meeting with Dr. Quyi Cavaz and Coordinator Eru. With the two women were about a dozen or so young Hapan women, no doubt interns in graduate studies in physics, all of whom surrounded the special gateway device that they had completed.

"The device has already been programmed with the coordinates that you sent us, Your Highness," Cavaz reported reluctantly. "It is ready to be activated at your demand."

Allana sighed, mirroring the physicist's reluctance as she thought about her mother's spirit, tortured under Plagueis's power. She then looked the doctor straight in the eyes. "Turn it on."

Cavaz then turned to one of the interns and wordlessly nodded. In turn, that intern bent down to press a button along the entryway of the machine, and she then hurriedly stepped away toward her fellow students. A few seconds after she joined them, a brilliant blue light flared in the gateway's center.

All eyes in the room were transfixed as they watched the blue light shine, somehow not damaging their corneas, especially since they were all light-sensitive Hapans.

Ten seconds after the light - which was no doubt the portal itself - appeared, a male Muun stepped through, a devious smile plastered on his gray face as he glared victoriously at Allana.

"Hello, Your Majesty," Darth Plagueis said. "Thank you for freeing me from that dreadful reality that you yourself sent me to." The portal behind him then closed up, the light representing it dying out in an instant.

"I kept my end of the bargain, Plagueis," Allana said in a disgusted tone. "Now will you leave my mother alone, or will I have to activate that thing again and send you back?"

Plagueis raised his hands up in mock-defense. "There is no need to threaten me, Your Highness. I have also kept my end of the bargain mere seconds ago. Your mother's soul is free."

"Then why do I sense that you're lying to me?" Allana asked angrily.

Plagueis made a wry face. "Because I'm not telling you all of the truth, my dear," he answered. "She's only free as long as I want her to be free. I can take her back from the embrace of the Force anytime I want to."

"So you mean she's still trapped in your clutches, Plagueis," Allana growled.

"Think of it as me being allowed to free her from the jail of the Force at anytime I wish," Plagueis told her in an assuring tone. "I have to make sure I keep her as my ace in the hole in case you try to betray me, after all. But, to level with you, here is something to solidify our professional relationship."

He then launched an arc of purple lightning for the shuttle pilot who accompanied Allana and Poik. The pilot flew back across the room and slid along the floor of the room before coming to a stop, now unconscious. Everyone regarded the knocked-out pilot and Plagueis with equal amounts of shock.

"Why did you do that?!" Allana roared.

"Why did you allow that spy there to accompany you when she had to do no more than to ferry you back down to the Fountain Palace, Your Highness?" Plagueis countered.

"What?" Allana asked, now more confused than angry.

"Seems like an awfully stupid decision to be made by a Queen Mother, even for your age," Plagueis commented as he stepped out of the gateway device and walked over to the downed pilot.

"What makes you think that she's a spy?" Allana asked.

Plagueis didn't answer until he passed the Queen Mother, knelt down to the unconscious pilot, and then took out a small recording device from within her uniform. The Sith Lord stood back up to his full height to show Allana the device and pointed at the Imperial insignia at the bottom. The device was still clearly recording for someone.

"Whoever you are," Allana said, "make no mistake, I will do everything in my power to stop you." She then took the device from Plagueis and shut it off on her own.

"That still doesn't explain how you knew she was a spy," Allana said as she passed the recording device along to Poik.

"I sensed her intentions from the moment I stepped back into this reality," he said. "Why didn't you?"

Allana opened her mouth to reply, only to realize that she didn't know. She didn't know why she even allowed the pilot to accompany her and Poik when her whole purpose was, as Plagueis just said, to ferry them down to the Fountain Palace.

But then her eyes widened in shock once it came to her, and she looked at Plagueis head-on. "You manipulated me into bringing her with me," she concluded, her voice on the verge of exploding into an all-out rage. "Right before the gateway device was even turned on, you managed to reach out to me between realities with the Force, like you did before, and managed to twist my thinking, just like you did before when you convinced me that you were the Bringer of Tranquility. And you did this just to show that I had a spy to facilitate some kind of trust with me."

Plagueis grimaced. "It seems as if I still have to work out the kinks in my manipulation with you, Your Majesty," he growled.

"How dare you manipulate the Queen Mother like this!" Poik shouted at Plagueis. "You have no right-"

The chamberlain was instantly silenced when the Sith Lord sent out a Force wave that blew her back across the room, but which didn't knock her out like the lightning did to the pilot.

But then Allana sent a Force wave of her own to also send Plagueis back across the room and pin him to the wall at his back.

"Release me now, or else..." Plagueis let his implied threat trail off as the soul of Tenel Ka appeared between him and Allana, her form laying laterally in the air as if she were asleep.

Allana's eyes widened in fear for her mother's spirit, so she reluctantly allowed Plagueis to drop back to the floor on his feet.

"Thank you," Plagueis said with a smug tone, allowing the form of Allana's mother to disappear back into the Force.

"Don't think you're off the hook, Plagueis," Allana said. "I'll be extra careful around you from now on; don't think you can play your little mind games with me."

"I'll keep that in mind, no pun intended," Plagueis replied with a devious smile.

"I do have one question, though," Allana said, her authoritative tone still in check. "I remember than you can't do a single thing to me, given that I'm the descendent of the one you managed to create from the Force. So how is it that you're able to manipulate my mind like you can?"

"I'm not quite sure, to be honest," Plagueis answered. "I do intend to look into that, now that I think about it. All I know for sure, however, is that I'm grateful that I can manipulate you at all, even if you are able to see through my facade like you just did."

"Yes, well, as I said, don't try to pull that on me ever again," Allana intoned.

"Or what?" Plagueis retorted mockingly. "You going to place me back into that hellish Yuuzhan Vong-run reality? Keep in mind the state of your mother's spirit, Your Majesty."

Allana sighed. "What do you plan on doing here, now that you're back?"

"Take over all of reality, of course," Plagueis answered simply. "And when that happens, I will allow your soul to be reunited with your mother, both of you out of my grasp for good."

"You don't have any interest in taking over the land of the dead?" Allana inquired.

Plagueis shrugged. "I have no interest in ruling the dead, not when they have so little control over the living in any direct sense."

"Fair enough, I guess," Allana said.

"Wait, what's all this about, Your Majesty?" Dr. Cavaz asked. "What's he talking about taking over all of reality?"

"It's a long story, Doctor," Allana said, turning to the physicist.

"How could you be allowing him to do this?" Cavaz asked.

"What did I tell you about questioning the Queen Mother, Doctor?" Eru growled at Cavaz.

The physicist glared at the coordinator. "How could you be okay with this?" she asked. "This Muun is essentially planning to kill the Queen Mother and take over all of reality and makes no secret about it!"

"So what do you suggest we do, Doctor?" Eru asked in a rhetorical tone.

Cavaz fell silent as she looked at Allana and Plagueis; the former looking at her helplessly, the latter smugly. The doctor looked back at Eru and sighed. "I guess you're right," she replied, defeated.


	33. Chapter 33

Daala watched in satisfaction as the last two Confederation Star Destroyers turned from the Duro system and warped into hyperspace with the remnants of the starfighter squadrons they carried. Everyone else on the bridge of the _Allegiance_ cheered in victory, and the Moff allowed it to pass, for they earned it, and she joined the fun in spirit as she gave each of her loyal subordinates genuine smiles in turn.

She was soon broken out of the fun when her personal commlink beeped at her belt. Taking it out, she activated it and said, "Yes?"

"Natasi, this is Drikl," the male voice on the other end replied. "We need to talk in person ASAP."

"Have you finished your campaign over Rodia yet?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, I am," Lecersen answered with a smug tone. "So I hope you don't mind if I arrive over at Duro in a shuttle of mine." It wasn't a request.

"What's the matter, Drikl?" Daala asked.

"I think you have a good idea," Lecersen said before abruptly cutting off the link.

Sighing, Daala replaced the commlink on her belt and grimaced that she would no doubt have to face Lecersen over the fact that she used one of her spies to infiltrate the Hapes Consortium.

What a way to spoil the victory for her, she thought.

.

"Boy, I can't wait for tomorrow, Master," Peb said sarcastically. He was sitting on a couch parallel to the one that Jaden was sitting in the living area of the grashal that the two of them now shared. "Working with Force-sensitive Yuuzhan Vong will be so much fun."

"Just because Macra was attacked by a traditionalist Vong today doesn't mean that that'll continue, Peb," Jaden countered. "I'm sure that other Yuuzhan Vong who aren't so... enthusiastic about the way of life here on Zonama Sekot will take that lesson that Yella gave to that one fellow earlier today."

"Master Korr, if there's one thing I know about Vong, it's that they're too damn stubborn to quit. After all, you'd think that the whole species living on this planet, with a strict non-violence policy in place, for a little over a decade and a half would've gotten rid of that whole savagery, right? Yet you can see, from what happened with Macra just an hour ago, that that ain't the case."

"Well, Magister Quee didn't say it would be easy living here," Jaden said.

"Yeah, but even on a world full of Vong, I'd like to think I wouldn't have to watch my back twenty-four-seven, worrying about getting attacked by some crazy traditionalist," Peb argued.

"I suppose you had a better idea for a base for the Order during a time of war that we're too weak to fight in, Apprentice Liko?" Jaden retorted.

"The Chiss Ascendancy certainly sounds like a better idea," Peb said. "Sure, they're a bunch of isolationists, but with a little convincing, I'm sure they'd've allowed us in."

"Even after all we've done against them, what with the Swarm Wars?" Jaden reminded the Chagrian.

"Hey, that last Swarm War was because the Killiks were controlling them, keep in mind, Master," Peb countered. "If anything, we helped them get out of that hive mind, which is probably why it would've made it all the more easier to convince them to accept us. At least for a little while, at any rate, just until that latest war in the larger galaxy ended."

"Yes, well, still," Jaden said, "you heard what Magister Quee said about having us take on Force-sensitive Yuuzhan Vong, not only to increase our strength in numbers in the Order."

"Yeah, yeah, because we have to get them back out to the galaxy to make peaceful relations and blah-blah-blah," Peb waved. "Doesn't mean I have to like it, or any of the other apprentices, for that matter."

"I don't expect any of you to, Peb, since I'm not all that enthusiastic about it myself," Jaden said. "Still, strengthening our numbers and mending relations with the Yuuzhan Vong aside, it's our duty as Jedi to accept any and every individual who has the will and capability to enter the Order as an apprentice."

Peb sighed. "Well, like I said, neither I or any of the other apprentices have to like it."

Jaden nodded in understanding. "It would be nice to see all of us change our mind about the Yuuzhan Vong, at least to some extent, on a more personal level once I begin starting training those Force-sensitive Vong with you and the other apprentices, Peb."

"Let's hope they don't try to kill any of us at least," Peb said sardonically.

"Well, given that these individuals actually want to be part of the Order, I doubt that they'd have any shared motivation with Macra's attacker," Jaden said.

Peb snorted. "No offense, Master Korr, but when it comes to Yuuzhan Vong, I'd like to be careful anyway."

"Understandable," Jaden nodded.

Peb then looked to either side of the couch that he sat on before looking back at the Grand Master in askance. "Say, you think it's a little weird that we're sitting on, and overall living in, organic material that's actually alive?"

Jaden shrugged nonchalantly as he sat back languidly on his own sofa. "What's wrong with a little weird? It's always good to embrace different things, like taking on these Force-sensitive Yuuzhan Vong, for one."

"I guess it's always good to keep an open mind," Peb agreed reluctantly. He then sat back on the couch in a mimicry of Jaden's lounging posture, albeit with more wariness, what with the knowledge that he was sitting on something that was actually living.

Jaden smirked. "Indeed, it is."


	34. Chapter 34

Reige and Lecersen walked into Daala's office - located aboard the _Allegiance_ - respectively, the two men regarding the female Moff sitting behind her desk. She, in turn, was silently looking back at her fellow Moff and the Head of State with a neutral expression.

As the two men stood at the other end of the desk, not taking either of the visitor seats there, Reige said, "Moff Lecersen told me that you had just jeopardized our alliance with the Hapes Consortium, Moff Daala. Why?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Head of State Reige," Daala replied in an even tone.

Lecersen snorted. "Don't bother lying, Daala. I happen to have your treachery on record to back up my claim." He then took out a recording device from his belt and activated it.

"_Do you think you can infiltrate the Fountain Palace as the Queen Mother's shuttle pilot?_" Daala's voice came from the device.

"_If you can double my usual salary from my employment under Lecersen, Moff Daala, it'll be a piece of cake_," another feminine voice responded.

"_Then report back to me as soon as you have news about the Queen Mother's actions that concerns the Empire__, Agent Yeha_," Daala's voice replied. "_I'll see to it that you have triple your usual income by the end of the year_."

"_Thank you, Moff Daala_," Agent Yeha's voice said. "_Over and out_." The recording stopped there, and Daala gave a hateful glance at Lecersen - who reciprocated her spitefulness with his own expression - before giving Reige a look equally mixed of anger and nervousness.

"And as if that wasn't bad enough, Moff Daala," Reige said, "we also have this on hand." The Head of State then looked at Lecersen and nodded.

The male Moff then pressed another button on the recording device, and the voices of Queen Mother Allana Djo Solo and someone named Plagueis were heard. Near the end of the recording, Agent Yeha was discovered by this Plagueis, and it ended with the Queen Mother promising that she would see to it that whoever sent the spy to infiltrate the Fountain Palace would pay.

"We'll make sure that we broach this with Her Majesty," Reige said. Then, as two stormtroopers entered the office, circling past the Head of State and Lecersen, the former continued with, "Until then, Moff Natasi Daala, you are under arrest for treason and potentially ruining a partnership with a powerful governmental and military ally."

The stormtroopers forced Daala up and out of her seat, and as one of them held her arms behind her against the futile resistance she offered, the other slapped the stuncuffs to bind her.

"Aren't you at all interested about this Plagueis character, Head of State?" Daala inquired, hoping that it would help her avoid another round of jail time.

"It is intriguing, I admit," Reige said. "But it's not worth what you just did." He looked over at the stormtroopers. "Take her away."

The troopers nodded and forced Daala between Reige and Lecersen to leave her office.

"You still need me for this war, Reige!" Daala called out as she was practically dragged out of her office. "You can't afford to lose me as an asset!"

The aforementioned leader of the Imperial Remnant and the Moff still with him simply ignored the protesting woman as she was forcibly led down the corridor outside to a jail cell somewhere at the bottom of the _Allegiance_.

"Has there been any information about this Plagueis, Moff Lecersen?" Reige asked.

"Well, there's very little about him that I can tell you..."

"Tell me what little there is to know about him then," Reige demanded curtly.

"Well, roughly three months ago, back when Gerila Shesh was Galactic Alliance Chief of State," Lecersen began in an orderly tone, "one of two ambassadors from the Hapes Consortium, Hego Damask the Second, was accused by Grand Master Kenth Hamner - the purported version of him from an alternate reality, that is - as being that of a Sith Lord named Darth Plagueis."

"Interesting," Reige replied evenly. "So why would the Hapan Queen Mother, a former Jedi apprentice, ally with a Sith Lord of all people?"

"Perhaps it's for the same reasons that she's allying with the Imperial Remnant, a government that her grandparents had fought so long against back in their prime," Lecersen suggested. "This Plagueis does sound like he could be of use to the war effort."

"Yes, well, even if that were the case," Reige said, "that still raises another question. Given what we just heard from the recording, with Plagueis holding Allana's predecessor, her own mother, in some kind of afterlife prison..." He trailed off at Lecersen's wry expression. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but just bear with me, Moff Lecersen. So anyway, why would the Queen Mother ally with a Sith Lord if he's holding the spirit of her mother hostage... Blackmailing," he said in realization.

Lecersen nodded. "Well, at least we have a guess on that. But since it was just a recording, we still don't know how Plagueis just came about from the Fountain Palace's basement; we figure it's from a device, but what does it do?"

"Maybe we'll find out down the line," Reige said. "Most likely after this war is over."

"And when we turn Daala over to the Hapans, how do we broach this with the Queen Mother?" Lecersen asked.

"You leave that to me," Reige assured him. "And I'll make sure that you'll be acquitted of any accusations that Her Majesty might level against you, as I have no doubt that, during the likely interrogation she had to go through by now, Agent Yeha has pointed the finger at you rather than Daala as her employer in this."

"Thank you, Head of State," Lecersen nodded respectfully.

"Don't thank me, Moff Lecersen," Reige intoned. "I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing this to make sure that the Imperial Remnant is still in good graces with the Hapes Consortium. The only reason I'm making sure you aren't given unfair blame in this isn't because I think you're any better than Daala, it's to facilitate the trust between the Remnant and Consortium."

"You make it sound like you're lying about this," Lecersen remarked.

"Well, given that it's you, the man responsible for heading a nanovirus attack against the Hapan royal bloodline about four years ago, it most likely will sound like a lie to the Queen Mother's ears," Reige said. "Oh, and nice try, but I'm not giving Daala over to the Hapans unless they ask. She needs to receive a fair trial, at least, so don't get your hopes up just yet, Moff Lecersen."

Lecersen scowled. "Very well," he said, his voice seething with contempt. "She'll be given a fair trial."

"Why do you say that as if you have any choice in the matter?" Reige retorted.

The Moff's eyes widened in the realization of his error. He nodded in obeisance. "My sincerest apologies, Head of State Reige."

"That's what I thought," Reige intoned.


	35. Chapter 35

In their shared office on Corellia, Five Worlds Prime Ministers Denjax Teppler and Genna Delpin - who were now officially running the entire Confederation - spoke to the hologram of Admiral Phennir on the desk between them.

"So far, Prime Ministers," Phennir reported, "with the help of the Imperial Remnant, the Hapes Consortium has taken exactly eighty-seven point nine percent of the territory that it took from the Galactic Alliance and now us. My experts in the war room estimate that in three days time, if they keep up the assaults they've been throwing against us, the combined forces of the Imperials and the Hapans will take back all of the space that we just took from the Consortium. And unfortunately, with the Confederation's forces in the shape we're in now, what with all these attacks whittling away our numbers, as well as the Galactic Alliance still needing another solid year to rebuild their forces, there doesn't seem any way that we can fight back against the Remnant and the Consortium."

"So what do you suggest we do, Admiral?" Delpin asked.

"Well, given how bad the Imperials and Hapans are overwhelming us so far..." Phennir trailed off and looked away from either Prime Minister.

"Go on, what's your plan, Admiral?" Teppler urged.

"I say we disband our partnership with the Galactic Alliance and go back to leading the territory we had when the Second Galactic Civil War ended," Phennir blurted.

"Abandon the Galactic Alliance?" Teppler asked.

Phennir nodded nervously.

"Just how badly have we lost in forces so far, Admiral Phennir?" Delpin asked.

"Well, while it may not seem like much, we've lost about forty-nine point seven percent of our forces to the Imperial-Hapan alliance, Prime Minister Delpin," Phennir explained. "But given how powerful that the Imperials and the Hapans are together, and how very little support the Galactic Alliance can offer us now-"

"I understand, Admiral," Delpin said, waving a hand to silence Phennir. "We've lost almost half our own forces while the Remnant and the Consortium are still going strong." She then looked back up to her fellow Prime Minister. "Denjax, I think that it's most logical that we follow with Phennir's plan and abandon the war entirely."

"And just leave the Galactic Alliance to die?" Phennir asked.

"Even if we were on better terms with the Alliance to begin with," Delpin argued, "continuing this effort against the Hapans and the Imperials will only harm the Confederation. As well, even if we did win, and gain half of the Galactic Alliance's territory, we'd be spread too thin by that point anyway. We should be more concerned about retreating back to our own territory, licking our own wounds, and fortify what we already have."

Teppler grimaced. "But we'd be giving the galaxy back to the Empire."

"And what's wrong with that?" asked Phennir, a former Imperial himself. "Let me remind you, Prime Minister Teppler, leaving out my past with the Empire altogether, there are two things that should assuage any apprehension you may have about this. One, the Remnant would be sharing the territory it's captured with the Consortium. And two, Head of State Vitor Reige isn't at all like Palpatine or any other Imperial was."

"Oh, I understand the Hapan angle, Admiral," Teppler said. "But it's not Reige I'm concerned about when it comes to the Empire. I'm more concerned about the treacherous Moff Council that pines for the days of Palpatine."

"Reige has a better hold on the Moffs than Jagged Fel or Gilad Pellaeon ever had, Prime Minister, in case you didn't notice from the way he's been leading his government so far," Phennir argued. "The Empire's in good hands, and so would the rest of the galaxy after the Galactic Alliance finally dies out."

"Along with whatever remained of the Rebel Alliance or the New Republic, eh, Admiral Phennir?" Teppler said with an undertone of scorn.

Phennir frowned at the implied accusation that he would take joy in seeing what the Rebel Alliance fought so hard to establish crumble into oblivion. "Regardless of whatever feelings I may have about this matter, Prime Minister Teppler, I know that Prime Minister Delpin will agree with me that by allowing the Hapans and the Imperials to win this war by pulling out as soon as possible, we will help the Confederation more than harm it. And that's more of a priority than the status of the Galactic Alliance can and will ever be to us."

"He's right, Denjax, I do agree with him," Delpin said to her fellow Prime Minister. "It's pretty safe to say that, what with all their losses now, the Galactic Alliance has lost almost all the power it's had on the greater galaxy. We have no choice but to declare our departure from this war if we want to avoid sharing the fate of the Alliance and suffer total destruction ourselves."

Teppler sighed in defeat. But just as quickly, his resolve came back to him as he argued, "Well, who's to say that the Imperials and Hapans will stop with us after we do pull out? For all we know, they could just as well attack us just out of revenge and not even think about the territory they can gain from our fallen government if they were to win."

"So why do you think that a peace treaty won't work?" Delpin asked. "Even if you're still apprehensive about the Moffs and the treacherous Hapans, Denjax, I'm pretty sure than Head of State Reige and Queen Mother Solo can see reason and keep to order and peace if we sue for it."

"If I may, Prime Minister Delpin," Phennir interjected, "I don't think that Prime Minister Teppler is concerned about the Confederation's well-being as much as he is the Galactic Alliance's."

Delpin looked at Teppler with pity in her expression.

But the latter shook his head. "It's not the Galactic Alliance. I just don't feel comfortable at all knowing that if we just abandon them, billions of people are going to die under Hapan-Imperial rule, and not just Alliance soldiers."

Delpin and Phennir looked at Teppler, sharing confused looks. "What makes you think either the Head of State or the Queen Mother would be so callous as to begin exterminating civilians, Prime Minister Teppler?" the admiral asked.

"Just imagine the widespread chaos and rioting that would take place with the fall of the Galactic Alliance on worlds like Coruscant," Teppler argued. "Her Majesty and Reige will have no choice but to resort to fatal violence if they'd want to begin establishing order and peace."

"You know what I think, Denjax?" Delpin asked.

"What's that, Genna?" Teppler replied.

"I think Admiral Phennir is right again," she answered. "You're too much of an Alliance sympathizer to let them go."

"And what if I am?" Teppler asked.

Delpin shook her head in pity. "I'm afraid we can't have that, Denjax, not at a time like this, anyway," she said.

"So what are you going to do about it?" he asked.

Delpin shrugged. "Well, I guess I'll try to convince you as best I can that leaving this war is the best option..."

She trailed off at the site of a holdout blaster being leveled up to her by Teppler, which was then set to lethal.

"As long as I also run this government, Genna," Teppler said, "I'll make sure that we don't abandon this war and let the Galactic Alliance die."

"Denjax," Delpin said as she held up her hands in surrender, "you don't want to do this."

"You're right, I don't, but I certainly don't want to leave this war either," he said.

"Well, if that's the case..." She deliberately trailed off this time before her right boot kicked open a small hatch on the floor under her and Teppler's desk, exposing a small red button. A second later, she stepped on that button, sending an electrical charge up through Teppler's chair that knocked him unconscious, the blaster dropping from his hand and to the floor.

"Well, while Prime Minister Teppler will spend about a month in a jail cell for treason," Delpin said to Phennir, "I will take sole office. Do you have any problem with that, Admiral Phennir?"

The admiral shook his head. "It only makes things less complicated, in my opinion."


	36. Chapter 36

Rodan nursed the throbbing headache invading both his temples before he looked back at the hologram of reinstated-Galactic Alliance Security General Belindi Kalenda on his office desk. In an attempt to look like he could still be civil after what he just heard, the Galactic Alliance Chief of State composed his voice as much as he could and asked, "So, with the Confederation gone as our allies, what do we do now, General Kalenda?"

"If surrender isn't an option with you, Chief Rodan," Kalenda said, "then I say we scatter the remains of our forces throughout the galaxy and leave Coruscant and what little territory we have left to the Hapans and Imperials."

Rodan banged a fist on his desk angrily, temporarily putting static in Kalenda's hologram. "That would mean that they've won the war, General, and I don't want to give them even the slightest bit of that impression," he said, his tone now wavering on bursting out in anger.

"Did the Yuuzhan Vong win the war they fought when they took Coruscant, Chief Rodan?" Kalenda inquired.

The Chief of State sighed in defeat. "No, it just meant that they had Coruscant for two years."

"And by the end of those two years, after the New Republic reformed into the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances," Kalenda began pointing out, "we took Coruscant back from the Vong and we beat them for good."

"We did," Rodan reluctantly agreed. "So that's what we need, huh? More time to allow us to rebuild our fleets, even if it means that the Hapans and the Imperials rule the galaxy for sometime."

"That's right, Chief," Kalenda nodded.

Rodan sighed again. "How long will it take for the entirety of Coruscant's population to evacuate?"

"It might take an entire week," Kalenda answered.

"And how long will it be before the Hapans and Imperials enter the Coruscant system and take everything from us?"

"Two days," Kalenda replied. "At most."

Rodan growled. "Well, if the Imperials and Hapans want to take Coruscant," he intoned, "I'll make sure they bleed for it first."

"What do you mean, Chief Rodan?" Kalenda asked.

"Leave Coruscant now, General Kalenda," Rodan told her instead. "Pack up your belongings and don't waste anytime taking a shuttle off. Do you understand me?"

Kalenda hesitated in her response, obviously confused as to what Rodan was planning. "Yes, Chief Rodan. I will. Leave, that is."

"Good," Rodan nodded. "Chief of State out." He then turned off the link in order to establish a new one; one that would broadcast through _The Perre Needmo Newshour_. Once that link was set up, he said, "This is Chief of State Rodan. I have an important message to send out to the good people of Coruscant..."

.

Aboard the _Dragon Queen II_, in the throne room, Queen Mother Allana Djo Solo, seated upon her prestigious throne, and Head of State Reige, standing stiffly in the center of the room, both listened to the frequency generated from the commlink held by Poik, who now stood between the governmental leaders.

"My fellow Galactic Alliance members," Chief of State Fyor Rodan's voice came from the comm, "pack up all of your belongings, take your friends, family, and whoever and whatever else you value and cherish, and leave Coruscant as soon as possible. As it has become clear, the war with the Hapes Consortium, and now the Imperial Remnant, combined with the recent loss of the Confederation as a military ally, has turned out to be an utter disaster for the Galactic Alliance. Hence, we face the imminent collapse of this august body, as it is inevitable that our enemies will move in on the few systems we have left, including Coruscant itself, and break down the last of our establishment.

"If we are to keep that establishment alive any longer, by any means necessary, then we must disperse, and we must fight for the continuation of our government against the oppressive, tyrannical organizations of the matriarchal Hapes Consortium and fascistic Imperial Remnant. Democracy must be kept alive for all to embrace, even if some of us, such as myself, will not be able to embrace it any further. Thus, I will say no more than this: Leave as soon as you can, so that you may live to breathe the freedom of democracy again one day."

The recording to Rodan's speech, which was broadcast on every major network medium throughout Coruscant, from an hour earlier came to an end.

"I wonder what Rodan meant when he said that he would no longer 'embrace democracy' any further," Allana commented.

"It sounds like he intends to commit suicide once we take Coruscant and the last of the Galactic Alliance's other territories," Reige piped in. "Just as Borsk Fey'lya sacrificed himself when the Yuuzhan Vong took Coruscant nearly twenty years ago."

"Then we'll just bombard the Imperial Palace from orbit, and not risk thousands of Hapan or Imperial troops from being wiped out in a suicidal proton bomb explosion," Allana concluded. "But that's not the point at the moment. What is the point is how many people have left Coruscant since this announcement."

"So far, a twentieth of the population have already gone to hyperspace, Your Highness, and more are leaving the planet even as we speak at a substantially steady rate," Poik reported. "It's estimated by our analysts that in a week's time, Coruscant will be vacated by all but the Ferals that still inhabit the Vongformed underworld of the planet."

"My own analysts have reported the very same thing, Your Majesty," Reige said. "Which will not be a big loss for either the Remnant or the Consortium, considering that in less than two days, we will be ready to take Coruscant and its remaining inhabitants, which would no doubt still be substantial."

"That's good to hear, Head of State Reige," Allana said. She then looked at Poik and said, "Leave us." After the chamberlain left the throne room, the Queen Mother looked back to the only other person in the room now and said, "Onto other business now. I understand that one of your Moffs have been arrested for sending in that spy to infiltrate the Hapan Palace just two days ago."

"Oh, yes," Reige nodded. "It was Natasi Daala who was arrested for the deed, Your Majesty."

"Really? Agent Yeha the spy told me that it was Drikl Lecersen who sent her."

"Personally, Your Highness, as much as I'd love to have had Lecersen arrested for sending in that spy, he presented enough evidence to the contrary, and that Daala tried to frame him in the event that Agent Yeha was caught," Reige cleared up.

"Smart woman," Allana commented. "If she actually demonstrated that kind of intelligence leading the Galactic Alliance, perhaps the Jedi Order wouldn't have turned on her like they did."

Reige smiled wryly in agreement.


	37. Chapter 37

Thousands of starships, shuttles, cargo freighters, and various different space vessels of all kinds, brands, and models continued to lift off Coruscant nearly two days after Chief of State Rodan made the announcement for the evacuation. They were all guided out of the system via hyperspace in an orderly fashion, as headed by the Coruscant Defense Force.

And yet, roughly seventy-seven point six percent of the population still capable of leaving the planet were caught unawares and prevented from leaving the Coruscant system when the combined forces of the Hapan and Imperial fleets dropped out of hyperspace from all directions.

All further traffic in the system stopped at the sight of the enemy fleets, and the warships of the Coruscant Defense Force turned to confront the Imperials and Hapans, yet they didn't fire; considering how badly outnumbered they were, the Alliance forces would no doubt only fight if they were provoked now.

Allana, standing on the bridge of the _Dragon Queen II_, viewed the proceedings with an air of disgust. It was mainly due to the fact that Darth Plagueis was standing next to her, smiling with that arrogant grin of his as he looked out through the _Queen_'s viewport.

"Your Majesty," Plagueis said, looking down upon the young and physically diminutive Queen Mother, "would you like to make your announcement to the good people of Coruscant?"

Sparing a sneering yet wordless glance at the Sith Lord, Allana turned, walked over to the Battle Dragon's main comm console, and told the lieutenant there to send out a systemwide transmission meant for everyone to hear. Once the frequency was established, Allana spoke into the comm.

"Citizens, soldiers, and leaders of the Galactic Alliance," she began, "as you can see, and as Chief of State Rodan has already informed you, we, the power of the Hapes Consortium, and our allies in the Imperial Remnant, are now moving in on the capital of your very government. Surrender, return to your homes, and the transition of power will be as smooth as it can be as we take dominance of the galaxy. We will not, however, hesitate in using violence to finally defeat the Galactic Alliance if we provoked into using such methods. So, good people of Coruscant, what will be your decision?" She then deactivated the comm, and looked out through the _Dragon Queen II_'s viewport to see what the Alliance's citizens and military would do next.

.

After Natasi Daala took charge of the Galactic Alliance, she had paid several different private contractors to perform various tasks within Coruscant's infrastructure that, unbeknownst to anyone but her and her cabinet, would eventually lead to a failsafe mechanism. This mechanism, triggered at the push of a button in the Chief of State's office, would activate a complex computer system that would send a powerful tectonic force through Coruscant's core, a force strong enough to blow the planet apart.

Fyor Rodan, who figured he was the last Chief of State of the Galactic Alliance, wondered why even a sociopath like Daala would have this program implemented. But now he was thankful to the bitter old Imperial as he not only got the idea in his head that she had established this protocol in the event of something like, say, another Yuuzhan Vong invasion, but also, it now enabled him to make sure that neither the Hapans or Imperials got Coruscant even for a second, never mind two years.

He had mulled over the question of whether or not he should go through it for the past two days. He figured that Coruscant falling to the Imperials or Hapans couldn't possibly be as bad as it falling to the Vong.

But he still wouldn't allow anyone but the Alliance to have Coruscant in the end, Kalenda's argument for reclaiming it later be damned. And even if history saw him as a deluded, obsessed monster willing to sacrifice billions of his own citizens, along with himself, for an ideal he believed in, then at least he wouldn't be around to see that happen.

And so, with a final forced breath, Rodan pressed the button on the machine, set up on his desk, which then sent out a wireless signal down to the depths of Coruscant. That signal, traveling at the speed of sound, simultaneously activated all of the other signals established, which generated a unified sonic boom concentrated especially on Coruscant's core.

In an instant, the planet literally cracked like an egg before it exploded in a brilliant array of white light. The preceding wave of impact started to throw off nearly all other vessels away.

As the billions of people left on Coruscant died out in that explosion, unbelievably immense amounts of debris and rocks - the remains of the figurative center of the galaxy - began pulverizing any and all vessels that were in their way indiscriminately. Those unfortunate vessels that tried to commence course correction procedures hurriedly only had less than a second to realize that their efforts were all for naught, as the resultant field of asteroids practically obliterated them with little effort. Even the strongest shields, such as those from the Battle Dragons and Star Destroyers of either the Galactic Alliance or the Imperial Remnant, couldn't protect those ships from destruction, never mind the weaponless civilian ships that were under the former's protection.

One of the few ships not to be utterly destroyed by the death of Coruscant was the _Dragon Queen II_, which wasn't holding up so much under its own shielding, the shielding of nearby vessels, or even its own weapons or those of its own fleet - which wouldn't have been sufficient to protect them from the blast anyway.

No, as Allana saw from the concentrated look on Plagueis's face, she instantly knew that she and everyone else aboard the _Queen_ was surviving purely because of the immense Force shield that the Sith Lord had erected around the Battle Dragon. With a reluctant expression, Allana decided to add her own potential through the Force to aid the wily Muun.

After thirty seconds, the explosion was past, leaving a deadly debris field from where Coruscant once was.

Only a few dozen Galactic Alliance warships remained. Taking advantage of the losses that the Imperials and Hapans took from the death of the planet, they turned tail and leaped into hyperspace with the plethora of civilian vessels left.

After half an hour of reorganizing themselves, the fleets of the Consortium and the Remnant found that each of their fleets had been cut down by three-quarters in the rough estimations that came from the abundance of reports that came. By then, all panic on the bridge of the _Dragon Queen II_, which was mostly elicited by the likes of Allana's chamberlain, Poik, had finally died down, and order had been restored as the Imperial-Hapan fleet prepared to leave the now-rocky system.

Having dropped the immense Force shield established by Plagueis around the capital Battle Dragon, Allana and the Sith Lord stared out the Battle Dragon's viewport at where Coruscant had once been.

"I don't think we can count this as a victory, Plagueis," Allana said, not looking away from the devastating view of the asteroid field that was now here.

The Sith Lord snorted. "You let your pathetic empathy for those who died here cloud your judgment, Your Highness. This is possibly the greatest victory that the Hapan-Imperial alliance could achieve; we were practically given this victory via the selfishness of our enemy."

Allana glared up at the Muun angrily, but didn't say anything. She didn't need to, and there was no point to it, anyway.

Plagueis couldn't help but smirk at the little girl's indignant reaction. "It is a shame, however, to view the destruction of a Force nexus as powerful as Coruscant."

"You think the Jedi might have felt it?" Allana asked.

Plagueis looked back down upon the ten-year-old Queen Mother in askance. "The Jedi?"

"You didn't wipe all of them out, remember?" Allana pointed out. "You forgot to kill Grand Master Jaden Korr before I placed you in that Yuuzhan Vong-filled reality. And I can bet that he's out there, right now, finding new Jedi apprentices as we speak, if he hasn't already."

Plagueis grimaced. "If that's the case, I'll destroy them as easily as I destroyed the rest of the Order. And this time, with you too busy being Queen Mother to stop me, even if I wasn't holding your mother's spirit captive - when she isn't in the Force, that is - I'll make sure Jaden Korr dies."

"We'll see," Allana responded in a derogatory tone.

A second later, the _Dragon Queen II_ launched into hyperspace with the rest of the Hapan-Imperial fleet.

.

On their way to the grashal meant to start the training of the Yuuzhan Vong Jedi initiates, Jaden and Peb suddenly grasped their hands to their temples and groaned in pain from a powerful sensation felt through the Force. It lasted for all of five seconds before it dissipated into nothingness.

By then, the Grand Master and the Chagrian apprentice looked at each other in askance.

"What happened, Master?" Peb asked.

"Coruscant," he answered after a while. "It's gone."

"Gone?" Peb inquired. "What do you mean gone?"

"It's destroyed," he said. "Along with the billions of people on it and near it. And because it was such a powerful Force nexus..." He trailed off at that.

"What do we do, Master Korr?" Peb asked.

Jaden looked at the Chagrian before he answered. "It's too late for Coruscant, Peb. All we can do now is continue on, just as we have after what happened to the others in the fight against Darth Plagueis."

With hesitance and reluctance, Peb nodded in agreement before he and Jaden turned back for their path.


	38. Chapter 38

A few minutes after they felt Coruscant's destruction, Jaden and Peb finally entered the Yuuzhan Vong training grashal to find three members of the Extolled - two of them male, one of them female - two former warriors - both male - a former priest, Magister Quee, and the rest of the Jedi apprentices. All of them now stared at the Grand Master and his Chagrian apprentices in expectation.

"Have you felt the death of Coruscant?" Quee asked.

Jaden and Peb nodded mutely and soberly.

"Then the time has come," Quee said.

"Time for what?" Peb asked.

"The final battle between the Jedi and the Sith," Quee elaborated. "Coruscant's destruction has symbolized the beginning of the end of either the Jedi or the Sith. Whoever wins shall maintain either justice or tyranny until the end of time."

"But the Sith are all but destroyed," Jaden said. "The last of the Lost Tribe are gone now, and all rumors of this 'One Sith' organization have been run into the ground. So what could you possibly... Plagueis is back, isn't he?"

Quee nodded. "So, before we begin training, Grand Master Korr, I would like to introduce your Yuuzhan Vong initiates." She then introduced the female Extolled as Qhu Bhu before introducing the slightly more scarred male Extolled as Begja Poifan and the less scarred male as Kunra. The warriors were Klin Rapuung and Relige Beetrava. And finally, the former priest was Harrar.

"Now we may begin," Quee said.

.

"What little remains of the Galactic Alliance, Milady," Poik reported to Allana in the _Dragon Queen II_'s throne room, "have all relocated to the world of Mon Calamari, where the New Republic had fled following the Yuuzhan Vong War, and where the Alliance itself was first established." The chamberlain emphasized her point by showing the holographic diagram projected on the comm she held in her hands.

"It looks like the Galactic Alliance is going home to die," Allana remarked. "That is, of course, if we, along with the Imperials still have the firepower capable of eliminating them, given what we just suffered at Coruscant."

"Oh, yes, Your Majesty, we do, and we would still have the resources to spare even assuming the maximum number of possible losses against the Alliance over Mon Calamari," Poik reported enthusiastically.

"And yet we can't afford to do that just yet," Allana said.

"I beg your pardon, Milady?" Poik inquired.

"The losses we suffered over Coruscant are still too staggering for both our people and the Imperials, even though it could technically be counted as a victory," Allana said. "To move in on the Galactic Alliance on their last stand now would be detrimental to the public eyes of both of this alliance's governments; public outrage could very well spill into chaos even if we assure that the Alliance dies for good, even with minimal losses."

"The people fear that the Galactic Alliance would be as brazen as Fyor Rodan and blow up Mon Calamari, even at their own destruction, just to risk one more final blow?" Poik inquired.

"It's a possibility that the public considers," Allana said. "Therefore, I'm allowing at least six months to pass before we attack Mon Calamari."

"If I may speak freely, Milady?" Poik asked.

"Go ahead," Allana allowed.

"Allowing the Alliance that time can very well give them the opportunity they need to build up their forces..."

"They would need two years at least for them to even match less than a quarter of our size, Poik," Allana said. "As far as we're all concerned, the Galactic Alliance is already dead. It's only a matter of time before that becomes official."

Poik deactivated the comm and nodded. "I understand, Your Majesty."

Allana then dismissed her reliable chamberlain.

.

As the _Dragon Queen II_ continued to speed back to Hapes via hyperspace, Darth Plagueis sat quietly in meditation. However, he wasn't merely centering himself; no, he was reaching out back to Hapes to activate the reality-traveling device through the Force. Once he felt that it was on, he could also feel, with his other sense, the ooglith-masqued agents coming through.

They would station themselves through the Fountain Palace, on the rest of Hapes, throughout the rest of the Transitory Mists... and in time, the rest of the galaxy.

Plagueis could already see in his visions the beginning of the Quiet Yuuzhan Vong Invasion; the one that would ensure that he would rule all of reality forever.


End file.
